/OM.C/S 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH 
MAKERS 

OLD  TALES  AND  SUPERSTITIONS 
INTERPRETED  BY  COMPAR- 
ATIVE MYTHOLOGY 

BY 

JOHN  FISKE 


La  mythologie,  cette  science  toute  nouvelle,  qui  nous  fait  suivre  les  croy- 
ances  de  nos  peres,  depuis  le  berceau  du  monde  jusqu'aux  superstitions  de  nos 
campagnes.  —  EDMOND  SCHERXK. 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
prcj-tf  Cambribge 


COPYRIGHT    1872   BY  JAMES  R.   OSGOOD   &  CO. 

COPYRIGHT    1900   BY  JOHN  FISKE 

COPYRIGHT    1902   BY  HOUGHTON,   MIFFLIN  &  CO. 

ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


TO  MY  DEAR  FRIEND 

WILLIAM  DEAN  HOWELLS 

IN  REMEMBRANCE  OF  PLEASANT  AUTUMN 

EVENINGS  SPENT  AMONG  WEREWOLVES 

AND    TROLLS    AND    NIXIES 

3:  ttetiicate 

THIS   RECORD  OF  OUR  ADVENTURES 


20074S7 


PREFACE 

IN  publishing  this  somewhat  rambling  and 
unsystematic  series  of  papers,  in  which  I 
have  endeavoured  to  touch  briefly  upon  a 
great  many  of  the  most  important  points  in  the 
study  of  mythology,  I  think  it  right  to  observe 
that,  in  order  to  avoid  confusing  the  reader  with 
intricate  discussions,  I  have  sometimes  cut  the 
matter  short,  expressing  myself  with  dogmatic 
definiteness  where  a  sceptical  vagueness  might 
perhaps  have  seemed  more  becoming.  In  treat- 
ing of  popular  legends  and  superstitions,  the 
paths  of  inquiry  are  circuitous  enough,  and  sel- 
dom can  we  reach  a  satisfactory  conclusion  until 
we  have  travelled  all  the  way  around  Robin 
Hood's  barn  and  back  again.  I  am  sure  that 
the  reader  would  not  have  thanked  me  for  ob- 
structing these  crooked  lanes  with  the  thorns 
and  brambles  of  philological  and  antiquarian 
discussion,  to  such  an  extent  as  perhaps  to 
make  him  despair  of  ever  reaching  the  high 
road.  I  have  not  attempted  to  review,  other- 
wise than  incidentally,  the  works  of  Grimm, 
Miiller,  Kuhn,  Breal,  Dasent,  and  Tylor ;  nor 
vii 


PREFACE 

can  I  pretend  to  have  added  anything  of  con- 
sequence, save  now  and  then  some  bit  of  ex- 
planatory comment,  to  the  results  obtained  by 
the  labour  of  these  scholars  ;  but  it  has  rather 
been  my  aim  to  present  these  results  in  such  a 
way  as  to  awaken  general  interest  in  them.  And 
accordingly,  in  dealing  with  a  subject  which  de- 
pends upon  philology  almost  as  much  as  astro- 
nomy depends  upon  mathematics,  I  have  omitted 
philological  considerations  wherever  it  has  been 
possible  to  do  so.  Nevertheless,  I  believe  that 
nothing  has  been  advanced  as  established  which 
is  not  now  generally  admitted  by  scholars,  and 
that  nothing  has  been  advanced  as  probable  for 
which  due  evidence  cannot  be  produced.  Yet 
among  many  points  which  are  proved,  and 
many  others  which  are  probable,  there  must 
always  remain  many  other  facts  of  which  we 
cannot  feel  sure  that  our  own  explanation  is  the 
true  one ;  and  the  student  who  endeavours  to 
fathom  the  primitive  thoughts  of  mankind,  as 
enshrined  in  mythology,  will  do  well  to  bear  in 
mind '  the  modest  words  of  Jacob  Grimm,  — 
himself  the  greatest  scholar  and  thinker  who 
has  ever  dealt  with  this  class  of  subjects,  —  "I 
shall  indeed  interpret  all  that  I  can,  but  1  can- 
not interpret  all  that  I  should  like." 
PETERSHAM,  September  6,  1872. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I.  THE  ORIGINS  OF  FOLK-LORE       ...  I 

II.  THE  DESCENT  OF  FIRE               .  50 

III.  WEREWOLVES  AND  SWAN-MAIDENS       .             .  94 

IV.  LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS               ...  141 
V.  MYTHS  OF  THE  BARBARIC  WORLD        .             .  191 

VI.    JUVENTUS  MUNDI  ....  235 

VII.    THE  PRIMEVAL  GHOST-WORLD  .  .  .282 

NOTE  . 325 

INDEX  •».....       327 

The  portrait  of  Dr.  Fiske  is  from  a  photograph  taken  in  1883 


MYTHS    AND    MYTH- 
MAKERS 


THE   ORIGINS  OF   FOLK-LORE 

FEW  mediaeval  heroes  are  so  widely  known 
as  William  Tell.    His  exploits  have  been 
celebrated  by  one  of  the  greatest  poets 
and  one  of  the  most  popular  musicians  of  mod- 
ern times.    They  are  doubtless  familiar  to  many 
who  have  never  heard  of  Stauffacher  or  Winkel- 
ried,  who  are  quite  ignorant  of  the  prowess  of 
Roland,  and  to  whom  Arthur  and  Lancelot, 
nay,  even  Charlemagne,  are  but  empty  names. 
Nevertheless,  in  spite  of  his  vast  reputation, 
it  is  very  likely  that  no  such  person  as  William 
Tell  ever  existed,  and  it  is  certain  that  the  story 
of  his  shooting  the  apple  from  his  son's  head  has 
no  historical  value  whatever.    In  spite  of  the 
wrath  of  unlearned  but  patriotic  Swiss,  especially 
of  those  of  the  cicerone  class,  this  conclusion  is 
forced  upon  us  as  soon  as  we  begin  to  study  the 
legend  in  accordance  with  the  canons  of  modern 
historical  criticism.    It  is  useless  to  point  to 
I 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

Tell's  lime-tree,  standing  to-day  in  the  centre  of 
the  market-place  at  Altdorf,  or  to  quote  for  our 
confusion  his  crossbow  preserved  in  the  arsenal 
at  Zurich,  as  unimpeachable  witnesses  to  the 
truth  of  the  story.  It  is  in  vain  that  we  are  told, 
"  The  bricks  are  alive  to  this  day  to  testify  to 
it ;  therefore,  deny  it  not."  These  proofs  are 
not  more  valid  than  the  handkerchief  of  St. 
Veronica,  or  the  fragments  of  the  true  cross. 
For  if  relics  are  to  be  received  as  evidence,  we 
must  needs  admit  the  truth  of  every  miracle 
narrated  by  the  Bollandists. 

The  earliest  work  which  makes  any  allusion 
to  the  adventures  of  William  Tell  is  the  chroni- 
cle of  the  younger  Melchior  Russ,  written  in 
1482.  As  the  shooting  of  the  apple  was  sup- 
posed to  have  taken  place  in  1296,  this  leaves 
an  interval  of  one  hundred  and  eighty-six  years, 
during  which  neither  a  Tell,  nor  a  William,  nor 
the  apple,  nor  the  cruelty  of  Gessler,  received 
any  mention.  It  may  also  be  observed,  paren- 
thetically, that  the  charters  of  Kussenach,  when 
examined,  show  that  no  man  by  the  name  of 
Gessler  ever  ruled  there.  The  chroniclers  of  the 
fifteenth  century,  Faber  and  Hammerlin,  who 
minutely  describe  the  tyrannical  acts  by  which 
the  Duke  of  Austria  goaded  the  Swiss  to  re- 
bellion, do  not  once  mention  Tell's  name,  or 
betray  the  slightest  acquaintance  with  his  exploits 
or  with  his  existence.  In  the  Zurich  chronicle 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  FOLK-LORE 

of  1479  he  is  not  alluded  to.  But  we  have  still 
better  negative  evidence.  John  of  Winterthiir, 
one  of  the  best  chroniclers  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
was  living  at  the  time  of  the  battle  of  Morgarten 
(1315),  at  which  his  father  was  present.  He 
tells  us  how,  on  the  evening  of  that  dreadful 
day,  he  saw  Duke  Leopold  himself  in  his  flight 
from  the  fatal  field,  half  dead  with  fear.  He 
describes,  with  the  loving  minuteness  of  a  con- 
temporary, all  the  incidents  of  the  Swiss  revo- 
lution, but  nowhere  does  he  say  a  word  about 
William  Tell.  This  is  sufficiently  conclusive. 
These  mediaeval  chroniclers,  who  never  failed  to 
go  out  of  their  way  after  a  bit  of  the  epigram- 
matic and  marvellous,  who  thought  far  more 
of  a  pointed  story  than  of  historical  credibility, 
would  never  have  kept  silent  about  the  adven- 
tures of  Tell  if  they  had  known  anything  about 
them. 

After  this,  it  is  not  surprising  to  find  that  no 
two  authors  who  describe  the  deeds  of  William 
Tell  agree  in  the  details  of  topography  and 
chronology.  Such  discrepancies  never  fail  to 
confront  us  when  we  leave  the  solid  ground  of 
history  and  begin  to  deal  with  floating  legends. 
Yet,  if  the  story  be  not  historical,  what  could 
have  been  its  origin  ?  To  answer  this  question 
we  must  considerably  expand  the  discussion. 

The  first  author  of  any  celebrity  who  doubted 
the  story  of  William  Tell  was  Guillimann,  in 
3 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

his  work  on  Swiss  Antiquities,  published  in 
1598.  He  calls  the  story  a  pure  fable,  but, 
nevertheless,  eating  his  words,  concludes  by 
proclaiming  his  belief  in  it,  because  the  tale  is 
so  popular  !  Undoubtedly  he  acted  a  wise  part ; 
for,  in  1760,  as  we  are  told,  Uriel  Freuden- 
berger  was  condemned  by  the  canton  of  Uri  to 
be  burnt  alive,  for  publishing  his  opinion  that 
the  legend  of  Tell  had  a  Danish  origin.1 

The  bold  heretic  was  substantially  right,  how- 
ever, like  so  many  other  heretics,  earlier  and 
later.  The  Danish  account  of  Tell  is  given  as 
follows,  by  Saxo  Grammaticus  :  — 

"  A  certain  Palnatoki,  for  some  .time  among 
King  Harold's  body-guard,  had  made  his  brav- 
ery odious  to  very  many  of  his  fellow  soldiers 
by  the  zeal  with  which  he  surpassed  them  in  the 
discharge  of  his  duty.  This  man  once,  when 
talking  tipsily  over  his  cups,  had  boasted  that 
he  was  so  skilled  an  archer  that  he  could  hit  the 
smallest  apple  placed  a  long  way  off  on  a  wand 
at  the  first  shot ;  which  talk,  caught  up  at  first 
by  the  ears  of  backbiters,  soon  came  to  the 
hearing  of  the  king.  Now,  mark  how  the  wick- 
edness of  the  king  turned  the  confidence  of  the 
sire  to  the  peril  of  the  son,  by  commanding  that 
this  dearest  pledge  of  his  life  should  be  placed 
instead  of  the  wand,  with  the  threat  that,  unless 
the  author  of  this  promise  could  strike  off  the 
1  See  Delepierre,  Historical  Difficulties,  p.  75. 

4 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  FOLK-LORE 

apple  at  the  first  flight  of  the  arrow,  he  should 
pay  the  penalty  of  his  empty  boasting  by  the 
loss  of  his  head.  The  king's  command  forced 
the  soldier  to  perform  more  than  he  had  pro- 
mised, and  what  he  had  said,  reported  by  the 
tongues  of  slanderers,  bound  him  to  accomplish 
what  he  had  not  said.  Yet  did  not  his  sterling 
courage,  though  caught  in  the  snare  of  slander, 
suffer  him  to  lay  aside  his  firmness  of  heart; 
nay,  he  accepted  the  trial  the  more  readily 
because  it  was  hard.  So  Palnatoki  warned  the 
boy  urgently  when  he  took  his  stand  to  await 
the  coming  of  the  hurtling  arrow  with  calm  ears 
and  unbent  head,  lest,  by  a  slight  turn  of  his 
body,  he  should  defeat  the  practised  skill  of  the 
bowman ;  and,  taking  further  counsel  to  pre- 
vent his  fear,  he  turned  away  his  face,  lest  he 
should  be  scared  at  the  sight  of  the  weapon. 
Then,  taking  three  arrows  from  the  quiver,  he 
struck  the  mark  given  him  with  the  first  he 
fitted  to  the  string.  .  .  .  But  Palnatoki,  when 
asked  by  the  king  why  he  had  taken  more 
arrows  from  the  quiver,  when  it  had  been  settled 
that  he  should  only  try  the  fortune  of  the  bow 
once,  made  answer,  '  That  I  might  avenge  on 
thee  the  swerving  of  the  first  by  the  points  of 
the  rest,  lest  perchance  my  innocence  might 
have  been  punished,  while  your  violence  escaped 
scot-free.' " l 

1  Saxo  Grammaticus,  bk.  x.  p.  166,  ed.  Frankf.  1576. 

5 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

This  ruthless  king  is  none  other  than  the 
famous  Harold  Blue-tooth,  and  the  occurrence 
is  placed  by  Saxo  in  the  year  950.  But  the 
story  appears  not  only  in  Denmark,  but  in 
England,  in  Norway,  in  Finland  and  Russia, 
and  in  Persia,  and  there  is  some  reason  for  sup- 
posing that  it  was  known  in  India.  In  Norway 
we  have  the  adventures  of  Pansa  the  Splay- 
footed, and  of  Hemingr,  a  vassal  of  Harold 
Hardrada,  who  invaded  England  in  1066.  In 
Iceland  there  is  the  kindred  legend  of  Egil, 
brother  of  Wayland  Smith,  the  Norse  Vulcan. 
In  England  there  is  the  ballad  of  William  of 
Cloudeslee,  which  supplied  Scott  with  many 
details  of  the  archery  scene  in  "  Ivanhoe." 
Here  says  the  dauntless  bowman, — 

'•  I  have  a  sonne  seven  years  old; 

Hee  is  to  me  full  deere; 
I  will  tye  him  to  a  stake  — 

All  shall  see  him  that  bee  here  — 
And  lay  an  apple  upon  his  head, 

And  goe  six  paces  him  froe, 
And  I  myself  with  a  broad  arrowe 

Shall  cleave  the  apple  in  to  we." 

In  the  "  Malleus  Maleficarum  "  a  similar 
story  is  told  of  Puncher,  a  famous  magician  on 
the  Upper  Rhine.  The  great  ethnologist  Cas- 
tren  dug  up  the  same  legend  in  Finland.  It  is 
common,  as  Dr.  Dasent  observes,  to  the  Turks 
and  Mongolians  ;  "  and  a  legend  of  the  wild 
6 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  FOLK-LORE 

Samoyeds,  who  never  heard  of  Tell  or  saw  a 
book  in  their  lives,  relates  it,  chapter  and  verse, 
of  one  of  their  marksmen."  Finally,  in  the 
Persian  poem  of  Farid-Uddin  Attar,  born  in 
1119,  we  read  a  story  of  a  prince  who  shoots  an 
apple  from  the  head  of  a  beloved  page.  In  all 
these  stories,  names  and  motives  of  course  dif- 
fer ;  but  all  contain  the  same  essential  incidents. 
It  is  always  an  unerring  archer  who,  at  the  ca- 
pricious command  of  a  tyrant,  shoots  from  the 
head  of  some  one  dear  to  him  a  small  object,  be 
it  an  apple,  a  nut,  or  a  piece  of  coin.  The  archer 
always  provides  himself  with  a  second  arrow, 
and,  when  questioned  as  to  the  use  he  intended 
to  make  of  his  extra  weapon,  the  invariable  re- 
ply is,  "  To  kill  thee,  tyrant,  had  I  slain  my 
son."  Now,  when  a  marvellous  occurrence  is 
said  to  have  happened  everywhere,  we  may  feel 
sure  that  it  never  happened  anywhere.  Popular 
fancies  propagate  themselves  indefinitely,  but 
historical  events,  especially  the  striking  and  dra- 
matic ones,  are  rarely  repeated.  The  facts  here 
collected  lead  inevitably  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  Tell  myth  was  known,  in  its  general  features, 
to  our  Aryan  ancestors,  before  ever  they  left 
their  primitive  dwelling-place  in  Central  Asia. 

It  may,  indeed,  be  urged  that  some  one  of 
these  wonderful  marksmen  may  really  have  ex- 
isted and  have  performed  the  feat  recorded  in 
the  legend ;  and  that  his  true  story,  carried 
7 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

about  by  hearsay  tradition  from  one  country  to 
another  and  from  age  to  age,  may  have  formed 
the  theme  for  all  the  variations  above  men- 
tioned, just  as  the  fables  of  La  Fontaine  were 
patterned  after  those  of  ./Esop  and  Phaedrus, 
and  just  as  many  of  Chaucer's  tales  were  con- 
sciously adopted  from  Boccaccio.  No  doubt 
there  has  been  a  good  deal  of  borrowing  and 
lending  among  the  legends  of  different  peoples, 
as  well  as  among  the  words  of  different  lan- 
guages ;  and  possibly  even  some  picturesque 
fragment  of  early  history  may  have  now  and 
then  been  carried  about  the  world  in  this  man- 
ner. But  as  the  philologist  can  with  almost  un- 
erring certainty  distinguish  between  the  native 
and  the  imported  words  in  any  Aryan  language, 
by  examining  their  phonetic  peculiarities,  so  the 
student  of  popular  traditions,  though  working 
with  far  less  perfect  instruments,  can  safely  as- 
sert, with  reference  to  a  vast  number  of  legends, 
that  they  cannot  have  been  obtained  by  any 
process  of  conscious  borrowing.  The  difficul- 
ties inseparable  from  any  such  hypothesis  will 
become  more  and  more  apparent  as  we  proceed 
to  examine  a  few  other  stories  current  in  differ- 
ent portions  of  the  Aryan  domain. 

As  the  Swiss  must  give  up  his  Tell,  so  must 
the  Welshman  be  deprived  of  his  brave  dog 
Gellert,  over  whose  cruel  fate  I  confess  to  hav- 
ing shed  more  tears  than  I  should  regard  as 
8 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  FOLK-LORE 

well  bestowed  upon  the  misfortunes  of  many  a 
human  hero  of  romance.  Every  one  knows  how 
the  dear  old  brute  killed  the  wolf  which  had 
come  to  devour  Llewellyn's  child,  and  how  the 
prince,  returning  home  and  finding  the  cradle 
upset  and  the  dog's  mouth  dripping  blood, 
hastily  slew  his  benefactor,  before  the  cry  of  the 
child  from  behind  the  cradle  and  the  sight  of 
the  wolf's  body  had  rectified  his  error.  To  this 
day  the  visitor  to  Snowdon  is  told  the  touching 
story,  and  shown  the  place  called  Beth-Gellert,1 
where  the  dog's  grave  is  still  to  be  seen.  Never- 
theless, the  story  occurs  in  the  fireside  lore  of 
nearly  every  Aryan  people.  Under  the  Gellert- 
form  it  started  in  the  Panchatantra,  a  collec- 
tion of  Sanskrit  fables ;  and  it  has  even  been 
discovered  in  a  Chinese  work  which  dates  from 
A.  D.  668.  Usually  the  hero  is  a  dog,  but 
sometimes  a  falcon,  an  ichneumon,  an  insect,  or 
even  a  man.  In  Egypt  it  takes  the  following 
comical  shape :  "  A  Wali  once  smashed  a  pot 
full  of  herbs  which  a  cook  had  prepared.  The 
exasperated  cook  thrashed  the  well-intentioned 
but  unfortunate  Wali  within  an  inch  of  his  life, 
and  when  he  returned,  exhausted  with  his  ef- 
forts at  belabouring  the  man,  to  examine  the 

1  According  to  Mr.  Isaac  Taylor,  the  name  is  really  de- 
rived from  "  St.  Celert,  a  Welsh  saint  of  the  fifth  century,  to 
whom  the  church  of  Llangeller  is  consecrated. ' '  (  Words  and 
Places,  p.  3390 

9 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

broken  pot,  he  discovered  amongst  the  herbs  a 
poisonous  snake."  l  Now  this  story  of  the  Wall 
is  as  manifestly  identical  with  the  legend  of 
Gellert  as  the  English  word  father  is  with  the 
Latin  pater  ;  but  as  no  one  would  maintain  that 
the  word  father  is  in  any  sense  derived  from 
pater,  so  it  would  be  impossible  to  represent 
either  the  Welsh  or  the  Egyptian  legend  as  a 
copy  of  the  other.  Obviously  the  conclusion  is 
forced  upon  us  that  the  stories,  like  the  words, 
are  related  collaterally,  having  descended  from 
a  common  ancestral  legend,  or  having  been  sug- 
gested by  one  and  the  same  primeval  idea. 

Closely  connected  with  the  Gellert  myth  are 
the  stories  of  Faithful  John  and  of  Rama  and 
Luxman.  In  the  German  story,  Faithful  John 
accompanies  the  prince,  his  master,  on  a  journey 
in  quest  of  a  beautiful  maiden,  whom  he  wishes 
to  make  his  bride.  As  they  are  carrying  her 
home  across  the  seas,  Faithful  John  hears  some 
crows,  whose  language  he  understands,  fore- 
telling three  dangers  impending  over  the  prince, 
from  which  his  friend  can  save  him  only  by 
sacrificing  his  own  life.  As  soon  as  they  land, 

1  Compare  Krilof's  story  of  the  Gnat  and  the  Shepherd, 
in  Mr.  Ralston' s  excellent  version,  Krilof  and  his  Fables, 
p.  170.  Many  parallel  examples  are  cited  by  Mr.  Baring- 
Gould,  Curious  Myths,  vol.  i.  pp.  126-136.  See,  also,  the 
story  of  Folliculus,  —  Swan,  Gesfa  Romanorum,  ed.  Wright, 
vol.  i.  p.  Ixxxii. 

10 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  FOLK-LORE 

a  horse  will  spring  toward  the  king,  which,  if 
he  mounts  it,  will  bear  him  away  from  his  bride 
forever  ;  but  whoever  shoots  the  horse,  and 
tells  the  king  the  reason,  will  be  turned  into 
stone  from  toe  to  knee.  Then,  before  the  wed- 
ding a  bridal  garment  will  lie  before  the  king, 
which,  if  he  puts  it  on,  will  burn  him  like  the 
Nessos  shirt  of  Herakles  ;  but  whoever  throws 
the  shirt  into  the  fire  and  tells  the  king  the  reason 
will  be  turned  into  stone  from  knee  to  heart. 
Finally,  during  the  wedding  festivities,  the 
queen  will  suddenly  fall  in  a  swoon,  and  "  un- 
less some  one  takes  three  drops  of  blood  from 
her  right  breast  she  will  die ;  "  but  whoever 
does  so,  and  tells  the  king  the  reason,  will  be 
turned  into  stone  from  head  to  foot.  Thus  fore- 
warned, Faithful  John  saves  his  master  from  all 
these  dangers  ;  but  the  king  misinterprets  his 
motive  in  bleeding  his  wife,  and  orders  him  to 
be  hanged.  On  the  scaffold  he  tells  his  story, 
and  while  the  king  humbles  himself  in  an  agony 
of  remorse,  his  noble  friend  is  turned  into  stone. 
In  the  South  Indian  tale  Luxman  accom- 
panies Rama,  who  is  carrying  home  his  bride. 
Luxman  overhears  two  owls  talking  about 
the  perils  that  await  his  master  and  mistress. 
First  he  saves  them  from  being  crushed  by  the 
falling  limb  of  a  banyan-tree,  and  then  he  drags 
them  away  from  an  arch  which  immediately 
after  gives  way.  By  and  by,  as  they  rest  under 
ii 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

a  tree,  the  king  falls  asleep.  A  cobra  creeps 
up  to  the  queen,  and  Luxman  kills  it  with  his 
sword  ;  but,  as  the  owls  had  foretold,  a  drop 
of  the  cobra's  blood  falls  on  the  queen's  fore- 
head. As  Luxman  licks  off  the  blood,  the  king 
starts  up,  and,  thinking  that  his  vizier  is  kissing 
his  wife,  upbraids  him  with  his  ingratitude, 
whereupon  Luxman,  through  grief  at  this  un- 
kind interpretation  of  his  conduct,  is  turned 
into  stone.1 

For  further  illustration  we  may  refer  to  the 
Norse  tale  of  the  "  Giant  who  had  no  Heart  in 
his  Body,"  as  related  by  Dr.  Dasent.  This 
burly  magician  having  turned  six  brothers  with 
their  wives  into  stone,  the  seventh  brother  — 
the  crafty  Boots  or  many-witted  Odysseus  of 
European  folk-lore  —  sets  out  to  obtain  ven- 
geance if  not  reparation  for  the  evil  done  to  his 
kith  and  kin.  On  the  way  he  shows  the  kind- 
ness of  his  nature  by  rescuing  from  destruction 
a  raven,  a  salmon,  and  a  wolf.  The  grateful 
wolf  carries  him  on  his  back  to  the  giant's 
castle,  where  the  lovely  princess  whom  the 
monster  keeps  in  irksome  bondage  promises  to 
act,  in  behalf  of  Boots,  the  part  of  Delilah,  and 
to  find  out,  if  possible,  where  her  lord  keeps 
his  heart.  The  giant,  like  the  Jewish  hero, 
finally  succumbs  to  feminine  blandishments. 

1  See  Cox,  Mythology  of  the  Aryan  Nations,  vol.  i.  pp. 
145-149. 

12 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  FOLK-LORE 

"  Far,  far  away  in  a  lake  lies  an  island ;  on  that 
island  stands  a  church  ;  in  that  church  is  a  well ; 
in  that  well  swims  a  duck ;  in  that  duck  there 
is  an  egg ;  and  in  that  egg  there  lies  my  heart, 
you  darling."  Boots,  thus  instructed,  rides  on 
the  wolf's  back  to  the  island  ;  the  raven  flies  to 
the  top  of  the  steeple  and  gets  the  church  keys ; 
the  salmon  dives  to  the  bottom  of  the  well,  and 
brings  up  the  egg  from  the  place  where  the 
duck  had  dropped  it ;  and  so  Boots  becomes 
master  of  the  situation.  As  he  squeezes  the 
egg,  the  giant,  in  mortal  terror,  begs  and  prays 
for  his  life,  which  Boots  promises  to  spare  on 
condition  that  his  brothers  and  their  brides 
should  be  released  from  their  enchantment. 
But  when  all  has  been  duly  effected,  the  treach- 
erous youth  squeezes  the  egg  in  two,  and  the 
giant  instantly  bursts. 

The  same  story  has  lately  been  found  in 
Southern  India,  and  is  published  in  Miss  Frere's 
remarkable  collection  of  tales  entitled  "  Old 
Deccan  Days."  In  the  Hindu  version  the  seven 
daughters  of  a  rajah,  with  their  husbands,  are 
transformed  into  stone  by  the  great  magician 
Punchkin,  —  all  save  the  youngest  daughter, 
whom  Punchkin  keeps  shut  up  in  a  tower  until 
by  threats  or  coaxing  he  may  prevail  upon  her 
to  marry  him.  But  the  captive  princess  leaves 
a  son  at  home  in  the  cradle,  who  grows  up  to 
manhood  unmolested,  and  finally  undertakes 
13 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

the  rescue  of  his  family.  After  long  and  weary 
wanderings  he  finds  his  mother  shut  up  in 
Punchkin's  tower,  and  persuades  her  to  play 
the  part  of  the  princess  in  the  Norse  legend. 
The  trick  is  equally  successful.  "  Hundreds  of 
thousands  of  miles  away  there  lies  a  desolate 
country  covered  with  thick  jungle.  In  the 
midst  of  the  jungle  grows  a  circle  of  palm-trees, 
and  in  the  centre  of  the  circle  stand  six  jars  full 
of  water,  piled  one  above  another ;  below  the 
sixth  jar  is  a  small  cage  which  contains  a  little 
green  parrot ;  on  the  life  of  the  parrot  depends 
my  life,  and  if  the  parrot  is  killed  I  must  die." * 
The  young  prince  finds  the  place  guarded  by  a 
host  of  dragons,  but  some  eaglets  whom  he  has 
saved  from  a  devouring  serpent  in  the  course 
of  his  journey  take  him  on  their  crossed  wings 
and  carry  him  to  the  place  where  the  jars  are 
standing.  He  instantly  overturns  the  jars,  and 

1  The  same  incident  occurs  in  the  Arabian  story  of  Seyf- 
el-Mulook  and  Bedeea-el-Jemal,  where  the  Jinni's  soul  is  in- 
closed in  the  crop  of  a  sparrow,  and  the  sparrow  imprisoned 
in  a  small  box,  and  this  inclosed  in  another  small  box,  and 
this  again  in  seven  other  boxes,  which  are  put  into  seven 
chests,  contained  in  a  coffer  of  marble,  which  is  sunk  in  the 
ocean  that  surrounds  the  world.  Seyf-el-Mulook  raises  the 
coffer  by  the  aid  ot  Suleyman's  seal-ring,  and  having  extri- 
cated the  sparrow,  strangles  it,  whereupon  the  Jinni's  body 
is  converted  into  a  heap  of  black  ashes,  and  Seyf-el-Mulook 
escapes  with  the  maiden  Dolet-Khatoon.  See  Lane's 
Arabian  Nights,  vol.  iii.  p.  316. 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  FOLK-LORE 

seizing  the  parrot,  obtains  from  the  terrified 
magician  full  reparation.  As  soon  as  his  own 
friends  and  a  stately  procession  of  other  royal 
or  noble  victims  have  been  set  at  liberty,  he 
proceeds  to  pull  the  parrot  to  pieces.  As  the 
wings  and  legs  come  away,  so  tumble  ofF  the 
arms  and  legs  of  the  magician  ;  and  finally  as 
the  prince  wrings  the  bird's  neck,  Punchkin 
twists  his  own  head  round  and  dies. 

The  story  is  also  told  in  the  highlands  of 
Scotland,  and  some  portions  of  it  will  be  recog- 
nized by  the  reader  as  incidents  in  the  Arabian 
tale  of  the  Princess  Parizade.  The  union  of 
close  correspondence  in  conception  with  mani- 
fest independence  in  the  management  of  the 
details  of  these  stories  is  striking  enough,  but 
it  is  a  phenomenon  with  which  we  become 
quite  familiar  as  we  proceed  in  the  study  of 
Aryan  popular  literature.  The  legend  of  the 
Master  Thief  is  no  less  remarkable  than  that 
of  Punchkin.  In  the  Scandinavian  tale  the 
Thief,  wishing  to  get  possession  of  a  farmer's 
ox,  carefully  hangs  himself  to  a  tree  by  the 
roadside.  The  farmer,  passing  by  with  his  ox, 
is  indeed  struck  by  the  sight  of  the  dangling 
body,  but  thinks  it  none  of  his  business,  and 
does  not  stop  to  interfere.  No  sooner  has  he 
passed  than  the  Thief  lets  himself  down,  and 
running  swiftly  along  a  by-path,  hangs  himself 
with  equal  precaution  to  a  second  tree.  This 
15 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

time  the  farmer  is  astonished  and  puzzled  ;  but 
when  for  the  third  time  he  meets  the  same 
unwonted  spectacle,  thinking  that  three  suicides 
in  one  morning  are  too  much  for  easy  credence, 
he  leaves  his  ox  and  runs  back  to  see  whether 
the  other  two  bodies  are  really  where  he  thought 
he  saw  them.  While  he  is  framing  hypotheses 
of  witchcraft  by  which  to  explain  the  phenom- 
enon, the  Thief  gets  away  with  the  ox.  In  the 
Hitopadesa  the  story  receives  a  finer  point. 
"  A  Brahman,  who  had  vowed  a  sacrifice,  went 
to  the  market  to  buy  a  goat.  Three  thieves  saw 
him,  and  wanted  to  get  hold  of  the  goat.  They 
stationed  themselves  at  intervals  on  the  high- 
road. When  the  Brahman,  who  carried  the 
goat  on  his  back,  approached  the  first  thief,  the 
thief  said,  *  Brahman,  why  do  you  carry  a  dog 
on  your  back  ? '  The  Brahman  replied,  '  It  is 
not  a  dog,  it  is  a  goat.'  A  little  while  after  he 
was  accosted  by  the  second  thief,  who  said, 
'  Brahman,  why  do  you  carry  a  dog  on  your 
back  ? '  The  Brahman  felt  perplexed,  put  the 
goat  down,  examined  it,  took  it  up  again,  and 
walked  on.  Soon  after  he  was  stopped  by  the 
third  thief,  who  said,  '  Brahman,  why  do  you 
carry  a  dog  on  your  back  ? '  Then  the  Brah- 
man was  frightened,  threw  down  the  goat,  and 
walked  home  to  perform  his  ablutions  for  hav- 
ing touched  an  unclean  animal.  The  thieves 
took  the  goat  and  ate  it."  The  adroitness  of 
16 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  FOLK-LORE 

the  Norse  king  in  "  The  Three  Princesses  of 
Whiteland  "  shows  but  poorly  in  comparison, 
with  the  keen  psychological  insight  and  cynical 
sarcasm  of  these  Hindu  sharpers.  In  the  course 
of  his  travels  this  prince  met  three  brothers 
fighting  on  a  lonely  moor.  They  had  been 
fighting  for  a  hundred  years  about  the  posses- 
sion of  a  hat,  a  cloak,  and  a  pair  of  boots,  which 
would  make  the  wearer  invisible,  and  convey 
him  instantly  whithersoever  he  might  wish  to 
go.  The  king  consents  to  act  as  umpire,  pro- 
vided he  may  once  try  the  virtue  of  the  magic 
garments  ;  but  once  clothed  in  them,  of  course 
he  disappears,  leaving  the  combatants  to  sit 
down  and  suck  their  thumbs.  Now  in  the  "  Sea 
of  Streams  of  Story,"  written  in  the  twelfth 
century  by  Somadeva  of  Cashmere,  the  In- 
dian king  Putraka,  wandering  in  the  Vindhya 
Mountains,  similarly  discomfits  two  brothers 
who  are  quarrelling  over  a  pair  of  shoes,  which 
are  like  the  sandals  of  Hermes,  and  a  bowl 
which  has  the  same  virtue  as  Aladdin's  lamp. 
"  Why  don't  you  run  a  race  for  them  ? "  sug- 
gests Putraka ;  and,  as  the  two  blockheads  start 
furiously  off,  he  quietly  picks  up  the  bowl,  ties 
on  the  shoes,  and  flies  away  ! l 

It  is  unnecessary  to  cite  further  illustrations. 
The  tales  here  quoted  are  fair  samples  of  the 

1  The  same  incident  is  repeated  in  the  story  of  Hassan  of 
El-Basrah.     See  Lane's  Arabian  Nights,  vol.  iii.  p.  452. 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

remarkable  correspondence  which  holds  good 
through  all  the  various  sections  of  Aryan  folk- 
lore. The  hypothesis  of  lateral  diffusion,  as  we 
may  call  it,  manifestly  fails  to  explain  coinci- 
dences which  are  maintained  on  such  an  im- 
mense scale.  It  is  quite  credible  that  one  nation 
may  have  borrowed  from  another  a  solitary 
legend  of  an  archer  who  performs  the  feats  of 
Tell  and  Palnatoki ;  but  it  is  utterly  incredible 
that  ten  thousand  stories,  constituting  the  en- 
tire mass  of  household  mythology  throughout 
a  dozen  separate  nations,  should  have  been 
handed  from  one  to  another  in  this  way.  No 
one  would  venture  to  suggest  that  the  old  gran- 
nies of  Iceland  and  Norway,  to  whom  we  owe 
such  stories  as  the  Master  Thief  and  the  Prin- 
cesses of  Whiteland,  had  ever  read  Somadeva 
or  heard  of  the  treasures  of  Rhampsinitos.  A 
large  proportion  of  the  tales  with  which  we  are 
dealing  were  utterly  unknown  to  literature  until 
they  were  taken  down  by  Grimm  and  Frere  and 
Castren  and  Campbell,  from  the  lips  of  ignorant 
peasants,  nurses,  or  house-servants,  in  Germany 
and  Hindustan,  in  Siberia  and  Scotland.  Yet, 
as  Mr.  Cox  observes,  these  old  men  and  women, 
sitting  by  the  chimney  corner  and  somewhat 
timidly  recounting  to  the  literary  explorer  the 
stories  which  they  had  learned  in  childhood 
from  their  own  nurses  and  grandmas,  "  repro- 
duce the  most  subtle  turns  of  thought  and 
18 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  FOLK-LORE 

expression,  and  an  endless  series  of  complicated 
narratives,  in  which  the  order  of  incidents  and 
the  words  of  the  speakers  are  preserved  with  a 
fidelity  nowhere  paralleled  in  the  oral  tradition 
of  historical  events.  It  may  safely  be  said  that 
no  series  of  stories  introduced  in  the  form  of 
translations  from  other  languages  could  ever  thus 
have  filtered  down  into  the  lowest  strata  of 
society,  and  thence  have  sprung  up  again,  like 
Antaios,  with  greater  energy  and  heightened 
beauty."  There  is  indeed  no  alternative  for  us 
but  to  admit  that  these  fireside  tales  have  been 
handed  down  from  parent  to  child  for  more  than 
a  hundred  generations;  that  the  primitive  Aryan 
cottager,  as  he  took  his  evening  meal  of  yava 
and  sipped  his  fermented  mead,  listened  with 
his  children  to  the  stories  of  Boots  and  Cinder- 
ella and  the  Master  Thief,  in  the  days  when  the 
squat  Laplander  was  master  of  Europe  and  the 
dark-skinned  Sudra  was  as  yet  unmolested  in 
the  Punjab.  Only  such  community  of  origin 
can  explain  the  community  in  character  between 
the  stories  told  by  the  Aryan's  descendants, 
from  the  jungles  of  Ceylon  to  the  highlands  of 
Scotland. 

This  conclusion  essentially  modifies  our  view 
of  the  origin  and  growth  of  a  legend  like  that 
of  William  Tell.  The  case  of  the  Tell  legend 
is  radically  different  from  the  case  of  the  blind- 
ness of  Belisarius  or  the  burning  of  the  Alexan- 
19 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

drian  library  by  order  of  Omar.  The  latter  are 
isolated  stories  or  beliefs ;  the  former  is  one  of 
a  family  of  stories  or  beliefs.  The  latter  are  un- 
trustworthy traditions  of  doubtful  events  ;  but 
in  dealing  with  the  former,  we  are  face  to  face 
with  a  myth. 

What,  then,  is  a  myth  ?  The  theory  of  Euhe- 
meros,  which  was  so  fashionable  a  century  ago, 
in  the  days  of  the  Abbe  Banier,  has  long  since 
been  so  utterly  abandoned  that  to  refute  it  now 
is  but  to  slay  the  slain.  The  peculiarity  of  this 
theory  was  that  it  cut  away  all  the  extraordi- 
nary features  of  a  given  myth,  wherein  dwelt 
its  inmost  significance,  and  to  the  dull  and  use- 
less residuum  accorded  the  dignity  of  primeval 
history.  In  this  way  the  myth  was  lost  without 
compensation,  and  the  student,  in  seeking  good 
digestible  bread,  found  but  the  hardest  of  peb- 
bles. Considered  merely  as  a  pretty  story,  the 
legend  of  the  golden  fruit  watched  by  the  dragon 
in  the  garden  of  the  Hesperides  is  not  without 
its  value.  But  what  merit  can  there  be  in  the 
gratuitous  statement  which,  degrading  the  grand 
Doric  hero  to  a  level  with  any  vulgar  fruit- 
stealer,  makes  Herakles  break  a  close  with  force 
and  arms,  and  carry  off  a  crop  of  oranges  which 
had  been  guarded  by  mastiffs  ?  It  is  still  worse 
when  we  come  to  the  more  homely  folk-lore 
with  which  the  student  of  mythology  now  has 
to  deal.  The  theories  of  Banier,  which  limped 

20 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  FOLK-LORE 

and  stumbled  awkwardly  enough  when  it  was 
only  a  question  of  Hermes  and  Minos  and 
Odin,  have  fallen  never  to  rise  again  since  the 
problems  of  Punchkin  and  Cinderella  and  the 
Blue  Belt  have  begun  to  demand  solution. 
The  conclusion  has  been  gradually  forced  upon 
the  student  that  the  marvellous  portion  of  these 
old  stories  is  no  illegitimate  excrescence,  but 
was  rather  the  pith  and  centre  of  the  whole,1  in 
days  when  there  was  no  supernatural,  because 
it  had  not  yet  been  discovered  that  there  was 
such  a  thing  as  nature.  The  religious  myths  of 
antiquity  and  the  fireside  legends  of  ancient  and 
modern  times  have  their  common  root  in  the 
mental  habits  of  primeval  humanity.  They  are 
the  earliest  recorded  utterances  of  men  concern- 
ing the  visible  phenomena  of  the  world  into 
which  they  were  born. 

That  prosaic  and  coldly  rational  temper  with 
which  modern  men  are  wont  to  regard  natural 
phenomena  was  in  early  times  unknown.  We 
have  come  to  regard  all  events  as  taking  place 
regularly,  in  strict  conformity  to  law  :  what- 
ever our  official  theories  may  be,  we  instinctively 
take  this  view  of  things.  But  our  primitive 
ancestors  knew  nothing  about  laws  of  nature, 
nothing  about  physical  forces,  nothing  about  the 
relations  of  cause  and  effect,  nothing  about  the 

1  •*  Retrancher  le  merveilleux  d'un  my  the,  c'est  le  sup- 
primer."     Breal,  Hercule  et  Cacus,  p.  50. 
21 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

necessary  regularity  of  things.  There  was  a  time 
in  the  history  of  mankind  when  these  things 
had  never  been  inquired  into,  and  when  no  gen- 
eralizations about  them  had  been  framed,  tested, 
or  established.  There  was  no  conception  of  an 
order  of  nature,  and  therefore  no  distinct  con- 
ception of  a  supernatural  order  of  things.  There 
was  no  belief  in  miracles  as  infractions  of  natural 
laws,  but  there  was  a  belief  in  the  occurrence 
of  wonderful  events  too  mighty  to  have  been 
brought  about  by  ordinary  means.  There  was  an 
unlimited  capacity  for  believing  and  fancying, 
because  fancy  and  belief  had  not  yet  been  checked 
and  headed  off  in  various  directions  by  estab- 
lished rules  of  experience.  Physical  science  is  a 
very  late  acquisition  of  the  human  mind,  but 
we  are  already  sufficiently  imbued  with  it  to  be 
almost  completely  disabled  from  comprehending 
the  thoughts  of  our  ancestors.  "  How  Finn 
cosmogonists  could  have  believed  the  earth  and 
heaven  to  be  made  out  of  a  severed  egg,  the 
upper  concave  shell  representing  heaven,  the 
yolk  being  earth,  and  the  crystal  surrounding 
fluid  the  circumambient  ocean,  is  to  us  incom- 
prehensible ;  and  yet  it  remains  a  fact  that  they 
did  so  regard  them.  How  the  Scandinavians 
could  have  supposed  the  mountains  to  be  the 
mouldering  bones  of  a  mighty  Jotun,  and  the 
earth  to  be  his  festering  flesh,  we  cannot  con- 
ceive ;  yet  such  a  theory  was  solemnly  taught 

22 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  FOLK-LORE 

and  accepted.  How  the  ancient  Indians  could 
regard  the  rain-clouds  as  cows  with  full  udders 
milked  by  the  winds  of  heaven  is  beyond  our 
comprehension,  and  yet  their  Veda  contains  in- 
disputable testimony  to  the  fact  that  they  were 
so  regarded."  We  have  only  to  read  Mr.  Bar- 
ing-Gould's book  of  "  Curious  Myths,"  from 
which  I  have  just  quoted,  or  to  dip  into  Mr. 
Thorpe's  treatise  on  "  Northern  Mythology," 
to  realize  how  vast  is  the  difference  between  our 
standpoint  and  that  from  which,  in  the  later 
Middle  Ages,  our  immediate  forefathers  re- 
garded things.  The  frightful  superstition  of 
werewolves  is  a  good  instance.  In  those  days 
it  was  firmly  believed  that  men  could  be,  and 
were  in  the  habit  of  being,  transformed  into 
wolves.  It  was  believed  that  women  might 
bring  forth  snakes  or  poodle-dogs.  It  was 
believed  that  if  a  man  had  his  side  pierced  in 
battle,  you  could  cure  him  by  nursing  the  sword 
which  inflicted  the  wound.  "As  late  as  1600 
a  German  writer  would  illustrate  a  thunder- 
storm destroying  a  crop  of  corn  by  a  picture  of 
a  dragon  devouring  the  produce  of  the  field  with 
his  flaming  tongue  and  iron  teeth." 

Now  if  such  was  the  condition  of  the  human 
intellect  only  three  or  four  centuries  ago,  what 
must  it  have  been  in  that  dark  antiquity  when 
not  even  the  crudest  generalizations  of  Greek 
or  of  Oriental  science  had  been  reached  ?  The 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

same  mighty  power  of  imagination  which  now, 
restrained  and  guided  by  scientific  principles, 
leads  us  to  discoveries  and  inventions,  must 
then  have  wildly  run  riot  in  mythologic  fictions 
whereby  to  explain  the  phenomena  of  nature. 
Knowing  nothing  whatever  of  physical  forces, 
of  the  blind  steadiness  with  which  a  given  effect 
invariably  follows  its  cause,  the  men  of  prime- 
val antiquity  could  interpret  the  actions  of  na- 
ture only  after  the  analogy  of  their  own  actions. 
The  only  force  they  knew  was  the  force  of 
which  they  were  directly  conscious,  —  the  force 
of  will.  Accordingly,  they  imagined  all  the  out- 
ward world  to  be  endowed  with  volition,  and  to 
be  directed  by  it.  They  personified  everything, 
—  sky,  clouds,  thunder,  sun,  moon,  ocean, 
earthquake,  whirlwind.1  The  comparatively  en- 
lightened Athenians  of  the  age  of  Perikles 
addressed  the  sky  as  a  person,  and  prayed  to 
it  to  rain  upon  their  gardens.2  And  for  calling 

1  "  No  distinction  between  the  animate  and  inanimate  is 
made  in  the  languages  of  the  Esquimaux,  the  Choctaws, 
the  Muskoghee,  and  the  Caddo.  Only  the  Iroquois,  Chero- 
kee, and  the  Algonquin-Lenape  have  it,  so  far  as  is  known, 
and  with  them  it  is  partial."  According  to  the  Fijians, 
"  vegetables  and  stones,  nay,  even  tools  and  weapons,  pots 
and  canoes,  have  souls  that  are  immortal,  and  that,  like  the 
souls  of  men,  pass  on  at  last  to  Mbulu,  the  abode  of  departed 
spirits."  M'Lennan,  "The  Worship  of  Animals  and 
Plants,"  Fortnightly  Review,  vol.  xii.  p.  416. 

a  Marcus  Aurelius,  v.  7. 

24 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  FOLK-LORE 

the  moon  a  mass  of  dead  matter,  Anaxagoras 
came  near  losing  his  life.  To  the  ancients  the 
moon  was  not  a  lifeless  ball  of  stones  and  clods  : 
it  was  the  horned  huntress,  Artemis,  coursing 
through  the  upper  ether,  or  bathing  herself  in 
the  clear  lake  ;  or  it  was  Aphrodite,  protectress 
of  lovers,  born  of  the  sea-foam  in  the  East  near 
Cyprus.  The  clouds  were  no  bodies  of  vapor- 
ized water  :  they  were  cows  with  swelling  udders, 
driven  to  the  milking  by  Hermes,  the  summer 
wind  ;  or  great  sheep  with  moist  fleeces,  slain 
by  the  unerring  arrows  of  Bellerophon,  the  sun  ; 
or  swan-maidens,  flitting  across  the  firmament, 
Valkyries  hovering  over  the  battlefield  to  re- 
ceive the  souls  of  falling  heroes ;  or,  again,  they 
were  mighty  mountains  piled  one  above  another, 
in  whose  cavernous  recesses  the  divining  wand 
of  the  storm-god  Thor  revealed  hidden  treasures. 
The  yellow-haired  sun,  Phoibos,  drove  westerly 
all  day  in  his  flaming  chariot ;  or  perhaps,  as 
Meleagros,  retired  for  a  while  in  disgust  from 
the  sight  of  men  ;  wedded  at  eventide  the  violet 
light  (Oinone,  lole),  which  he  had  forsaken  in 
the  morning ;  sank,  as  Herakles,  upon  a  blazing 
funeral-pyre;  or,  like  Agamemnon,  perished  in 
a  blood-stained  bath  ;  or,  as  the  fish-god,  Dagon, 
swam  nightly  through  the  subterranean  waters, 
to  appear  eastward  again  at  daybreak.  Some- 
times Phaethon,  his  rash,  inexperienced  son, 
would  take  the  reins  and  drive  the  solar  chariot 
25 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

too  near  the  earth,  causing  the  fruits  to  perish, 
and  the  grass  to  wither,  and  the  wells  to  dry  up. 
Sometimes,  too,  the  great  all-seeing  divinity,  in 
his  wrath  at  the  impiety  of  men,  would  shoot 
down  his  scorching  arrows,  causing  pestilence 
to  spread  over  the  land.  Still  other  conceptions 
clustered  around  the  sun.  Now  it  was  the  won- 
derful treasure-house,  into  which  no  one  could 
look  and  live  ;  and  again  it  was  Ixion  himself, 
bound  on  the  fiery  wheel  in  punishment  for 
violence  offered  to  Here,  the  queen  of  the  blue 
air. 

This  theory  of  ancient  mythology  is  not  only 
beautiful  and  plausible,  it  is,  in  its  essential 
points,  demonstrated.  It  stands  on  as  firm  a 
foundation  as  Grimm's  law  in  philology,  or  the 
undulatory  theory  in  molecular  physics.  It  is 
philology  which  has  here  enabled  us  to  read  the 
primitive  thoughts  of  mankind.  A  large  num- 
ber of  the  names  of  Greek  gods  and  heroes  have 
no  meaning  in  the  Greek  language ;  but  these 
names  occur  also  in  Sanskrit,  with  plain  physi- 
cal meanings.  In  the  Veda  we  find  Zeus  or 
Jupiter  (Dyaus-pitar)  meaning  the  sky,  and 
Sarameias  or  Hermes,  meaning  the  breeze  of  a 
summer  morning.  We  find  Athene  (Ahana), 
meaning  the  light  of  daybreak  ;  and  we  are  thus 
enabled  to  understand  why  the  Greek  described 
her  as  sprung  from  the  forehead  of  Zeus.  There, 
too,  we  find  Helena  (Sarama),  the  fickle  twilight, 
26 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  FOLK-LORE 

whom  the  Panis,  or  night  demons,  who  serve 
as  the  prototypes  of  the  Hellenic  Paris,  strive 
to  seduce  from  her  allegiance  to  the  solar  mon- 
arch. Even  Achilleus  (Aharyu)  again  confronts 
us,  with  his  captive  Briseis  (Brisaya's  offspring) ; 
and  the  fierce  Kerberos  (£arvara)  barks  on  Vedic 
ground  in  strict  conformity  to  the  laws  of  pho- 
netics.1 Now,  when  the  Hindu  talked  about 
Father  Dyaus,  or  the  sleek  kine  of  Siva,  he 
thought  of  the  personified  sky  and  clouds  ;  he 
had  not  outgrown  the  primitive  mental  habits 
of  the  race.  But  the  Greek,  in  whose  language 
these  physical  meanings  were  lost,  had  long  be- 
fore the  Homeric  epoch  come  to  regard  Zeus 
and  Hermes,  Athene,  Helena,  Paris,  and  Achil- 
leus, as  mere  persons,  and  in  most  cases  the 
originals  of  his  myths  were  completely  forgotten. 
In  the  Vedas  the  Trojan  War  is  carried  on  in 
the  sky,  between  the  bright  deities  and  the  de- 
mons of  night ;  but  the  Greek  poet,  influenced 
perhaps  by  some  dim  historical  tradition,  has 
located  the  contest  on  the  shore  of  the  Helles- 
pont, and  in  his  mind  the  actors,  though  super- 

1  Some  of  these  etymologies  are  attacked  by  Mr.  Mahaffy 
in  his  Prolegomena  to  Ancient  History,  p.  49.  After  long 
consideration  I  am  still  disposed  to  follow  Max  Miiller  in 
adopting  them,  with  the  possible  exception  of  Achilleus. 
With  Mr.  Mahaffy's  suggestion  (p.  52)  that  many  of  the 
Homeric  legends  may  have  '•'  clustered  around  some  historical 
basis,"  I  fully  agree  ;  as  will  appear,  further  on,  from  my 
paper  on  "  Juventus  Mundi." 
27 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

human,  are  still  completely  anthropomorphic. 
Of  the  true  origin  of  his  epic  story  he  knew 
as  little  as  Euhemeros,  or  Lord  Bacon,  or  the 
Abbe  Banier. 

After  these  illustrations,  we  shall  run  no  risk 
of  being  misunderstood  when  we  define  a  myth 
as,  in  its  origin,  an  explanation,  by  the  uncivi- 
lized mind,  of  some  natural  phenomenon  ;  not 
an  allegory,  not  an  esoteric  symbol,  —  for  the 
ingenuity  is  wasted  which  strives  to  detect  in 
myths  the  remnants  of  a  refined  primeval  sci- 
ence, —  but  an  explanation.  Primitive  men  had 
no  profound  science  to  perpetuate  by  means  of 
allegory,  nor  were  they  such  sorry  pedants  as  to 
talk  in  riddles  when  plain  language  would  serve 
their  purpose.  Their  minds,  we  may  be  sure, 
worked  like  our  own,  and  when  they  spoke  of 
the  far-darting  sun-god  they  meant  just  what 
they  said,  save  that  where  we  propound  a  sci- 
entific theorem  they  constructed  a  myth.1  A 
thing  is  said  to  be  explained  when  it  is  classified 
with  other  things  with  which  we  are  already  ac- 
quainted. That  is  the  only  kind  of  explanation 

1  "Les  facultes  qui  engendrent  la  mythologie  sont  les 
memes  que  celles  qui  engendront  la  philosophic,  et  ce  n'est 
pas  sans  raison  que  1'Inde  et  la  Grece  nous  presentent  le  phe- 
nomene  de  la  plus  riche  mythologie  a  cote  de  la  plus  profonde 
metaphysique."  "  La  conception  de  la  multiplicite  dans 
1'univers,  c'est  le  polytheisme  chez  les  peuples  enfants  ;  c'est 
la  science  chez  les  peuples  arrives  a  1'age  mur."  Renan, 
Hist,  des  Langues  Semitiques,  torn.  i.  p.  9. 
28 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  FOLK-LORE 

of  which  the  highest  science  is  capable.  We 
explain  the  origin,  progress,  and  ending  of  a 
thunderstorm  when  we  classify  the  phenomena 
presented  by  it  along  with  other  more  familiar 
phenomena  of  vaporization  and  condensation. 
But  the  primitive  man  explained  the  same  thing 
to  his  own  satisfaction  when  he  had  classified 
it  along  with  the  well-known  phenomena  of 
human  volition,  by  constructing  a  theory  of  a 
great  black  dragon  pierced  by  the  unerring  ar- 
rows of  a  heavenly  archer.  We  consider  the 
nature  of  the  stars  to  a  certain  extent  explained 
when  they  are  classified  as  suns  ;  but  the  Mo- 
hammedan compiler  of  the  "  Mishkat-ul-Ma'- 
sabih  "  was  content  to  explain  them  as  missiles 
useful  for  stoning  the  Devil  !  Now,  as  soon  as 
the  old  Greek,  forgetting  the  source  of  his  con- 
ception, began  to  talk  of  a  human  Oidipous 
slaying  a  leonine  Sphinx,  and  as  soon  as  the 
Mussulman  began,  if  he  ever  did,  to  tell  his 
children  how  the  Devil  once  got  a  good  pelting 
with  golden  bullets,  then  both  the  one  and  the 
other  were  talking  pure  mythology. 

We  are  justified,  accordingly,  in  distinguish- 
ing between  a  myth  and  a  legend.  Though  the 
words  are  etymologically  parallel,  and  though 
in  ordinary  discourse  we  may  use  them  inter- 
changeably, yet  when  strict  accuracy  is  required, 
it  is  well  to  keep  them  separate.  And  it  is  per- 
haps needless,  save  for  the  sake  of  complete- 
29 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

ness,  to  say  that  both  are  to  be  distinguished 
from  stories  which  have  been  designedly  fabri- 
cated. The  distinction  may  occasionally  be  sub- 
tle, but  is  usually  broad  enough.  Thus,  the 
story  that  Philip  II.  murdered  his  wife  Eliza- 
beth, is  a  misrepresentation  ;  but  the  story 
that  the  same  Elizabeth  was  culpably  enam- 
oured of  her  stepson  Don  Carlos,  is  a  legend. 
The  story  that  Queen  Eleanor  saved  the  life 
of  her  husband,  Edward  I.,  by  sucking  a  wound 
made  in  his  arm  by  a  poisoned  arrow,  is  a  le- 
gend ;  but  the  story  that  Hercules  killed  a  great 
robber,  Cacus,  who  had  stolen  his  cattle,  con- 
ceals a  physical  meaning,  and  is  a  myth.  While 
a  legend  is  usually  confined  to  one  or  two  local- 
ities, and  is  told  of  not  more  than  one  or  two 
persons,  it  is  characteristic  of  a  myth  that  it  is 
spread,  in  one  form  or  another,  over  a  large 
part  of  the  earth,  the  leading  incidents  remain- 
ing constant,  while  the  names  and  often  the 
motives  vary  with  each  locality.  This  is  partly 
due  to  the  immense  antiquity  of  myths,  dating 
as  they  do  from  a  period  when  many  nations, 
now  widely  separated,  had  not  yet  ceased  to 
form  one  people.  Thus,  many  elements  of  the 
myth  of  the  Trojan  War  are  to  be  found  in  the 
Rig-Veda  ;  and  the  myth  of  St.  George  and  the 
Dragon  is  found  in  all  the  Aryan  nations.  But 
we  must  not  always  infer  that  myths  have  a 
common  descent,  merely  because  they  resemble 
30 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  FOLK-LORE 

each  other.  We  must  remember  that  the  pro- 
ceedings of  the  uncultivated  mind  are  more  or 
less  alike  in  all  latitudes,  and  that  the  same 
phenomenon  might  in  various  places  independ- 
ently give  rise  to  similar  stories.1  The  myth 
of  Jack  and  the  Bean-Stalk  is  found  not  only 
among  people  of  Aryan  descent,  but  also  among 
the  Zulus  of  South  Africa,  and  again  among  the 
American  Indians.  Whenever  we  can  trace  a 
story  in  this  way  from  one  end  of  the  world  to 
the  other,  or  through  a  whole  family  of  kindred 
nations,  we  are  pretty  safe  in  assuming  that  we 
are  dealing  with  a  true  myth,  and  not  with  a 
mere  legend. 

Applying  these  considerations  to  the  Tell 
myth,  we  at  once  obtain  a  valid  explanation  of 
its  origin.  The  conception  of  infallible  skill  in 
archery,  which  underlies  such  a  great  variety 
of  myths  and  popular  fairy-tales,  is  originally 
derived  from  the  inevitable  victory  of  the  sun 
over  his  enemies,  the  demons  of  night,  winter, 
and  tempest.  Arrows  and  spears  which  never 
miss  their  mark,  swords  from  whose  blow  no 
armour  can  protect,  are  invariably  the  weapons 
of  solar  divinities  or  heroes.  The  shafts  of 
Bellerophon  never  fail  to  slay  the  black  demon 
of  the  rain-cloud,  and  the  bolt  of  Phoibos 
Chrysaor  deals  sure  destruction  to  the  serpent  of 

1  Cases  coming  under  this  head  are  discussed  further  on, 
in  my  paper  on  "  Myths  of  the  Barbaric  World." 

31 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

winter.  Odysseus,  warring  against  the  impious 
night-heroes,  who  have  endeavoured  through- 
out ten  long  years  or  hours  of  darkness  to  se- 
duce from  her  allegiance  his  twilight  bride, 
the  weaver  of  the  never-finished  web  of  vio- 
let clouds,  —  Odysseus,  stripped  of  his  beg- 
gar's raiment  and  endowed  with  fresh  youth 
and  beauty  by  the  dawn-goddess,  Athene,  en- 
gages in  no  doubtful  conflict  as  he  raises  the 
bow  which  none  but  himself  can  bend.  Nor  is 
there  less  virtue  in  the  spear  of  Achilleus,  in 
the  swords  of  Perseus  and  Sigurd,  in  Roland's 
stout  blade  Durandal,  or  in  the  brand  Excali- 
bur,  with  which  Sir  Bedivere  was  so  loath  to 
part.  All  these  are  solar  weapons,  and  so,  too, 
are  the  arrows  of  Tell  and  Palnatoki,  Egil  and 
Hemingr,  and  William  of  Cloudeslee,  whose 
surname  proclaims  him  an  inhabitant  of  the 
Phaiakian  land.  William  Tell,  whether  of 
Cloudland  or  of  Altdorf,  is  the  last  reflection  of 
the  beneficent  divinity  of  daytime  and  summer, 
constrained  for  a  while  to  obey  the  caprice  of 
the  powers  of  cold  and  darkness,  as  Apollo 
served  Laomedon,  and  Herakles  did  the  bid- 
ding of  Eurystheus.  His  solar  character  is  well 
preserved,  even  in  the  sequel  of  the  Swiss  le- 
gend, in  which  he  appears  no  less  skilful  as  a 
steersman  than  as  an  archer,  and  in  which,  after 
traversing,  like  Dagon,  the  tempestuous  sea  of 
night,  he  leaps  at  daybreak  in  regained  freedom 
32 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  FOLK-LORE 

upon  the  land,  and  strikes  down  the  oppressor 
who  has  held  him  in  bondage. 

But  the  sun,  though  ever  victorious  in  open 
contest  with  his  enemies,  is  nevertheless  not 
invulnerable.  At  times  he  succumbs  to  treach- 
ery, is  bound  by  the  frost  giants,  or  slain  by 
the  demons  of  darkness.  The  poisoned  shirt 
of  the  cloud  fiend  Nessos  is  fatal  even  to  the 
mighty  Herakles,  and  the  prowess  of  Siegfried 
at  last  fails  to  save  him  from  the  craft  of  Hagen. 
In  Achilleus  and  Meleagros  we  see  the  unhappy 
solar  hero  doomed  to  toil  for  the  profit  of  others, 
and  to  be  cut  off  by  an  untimely  death.  The 
more  fortunate  Odysseus,  who  lives  to  a  ripe 
old  age,  and  triumphs  again  and  again  over 
all  the  powers  of  darkness,  must  nevertheless 
yield  to  the  craving  desire  to  visit  new  cities 
and  look  upon  new  works  of  strange  men,  until 
at  last  he  is  swallowed  up  in  the  western  sea. 
That  the  unrivalled  navigator  of  the  celestial 
ocean  should  disappear  beneath  the  western 
waves  is  as  intelligible  as  it  is  that  the  horned 
Venus  or  Astarte  should  rise  from  the  sea  in 
the  far  east.  It  is  perhaps  less  obvious  that 
winter  should  be  so  frequently  symbolized  as  a 
thorn  or  sharp  instrument.  Achilleus  dies  by 
an  arrow  wound  in  the  heel ;  the  thigh  of 
Adonis  is  pierced  by  the  boar's  tusk,  while 
Odysseus  escapes  with  an  ugly  scar,  which  after- 
wards secures  his  recognition  by  his  old  servant, 
33 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

the  dawn  nymph  Euryldeia ;  Sigurd  is  slain  by 
a  thorn,  and  Balder  by  a  sharp  sprig  of  mistle- 
toe ;  and  in  the  myth  of  the  Sleeping  Beauty, 
the  earth-goddess  sinks  into  her  long  winter 
sleep  when  pricked  by  the  point  of  the  spindle. 
In  her  cosmic  palace  all  is  locked  in  icy  repose, 
naught  thriving  save  the  ivy  which  defies  the 
cold,  until  the  kiss  of  the  golden-haired  sun- 
god  reawakens  life  and  activity. 

The  wintry  sleep  of  nature  is  symbolized  in 
innumerable  stories  of  spell-bound  maidens  and 
fair-featured  youths,  saints,  martyrs,  and  heroes. 
Sometimes  it  is  the  sun,  sometimes  the  earth, 
that  is  supposed  to  slumber.  Among  the 
American  Indians  the  sun-god  Michabo  is  said 
to  sleep  through  the  winter  months  ;  and  at  the 
time  of  the  falling  leaves,  by  way  of  composing 
himself  for  his  nap,  he  fills  his  great  pipe  and 
divinely  smokes  ;  the  blue  clouds,  gently  float- 
ing over  the  landscape,  fill  the  air  with  the  haze 
of  Indian  summer.  In  the  Greek  myth  the 
shepherd  Endymion  preserves  his  freshness  in 
a  perennial  slumber.  The  German  Siegfried, 
pierced  by  the  thorn  of  winter,  is  sleeping  until 
he  shall  be  again  called  forth  to  fight.  In  Swit- 
zerland, by  the  Vierwaldstattersee,  three  Tells 
are  awaiting  the  hour  when  their  country  shall 
again  need  to  be  delivered  from  the  oppressor. 
Charlemagne  is  reposing  in  the  Untersberg, 
sword  in  hand,  waiting  for  the  coming  of  Anti- 
34 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  FOLK-LORE 

christ ;  Olger  Danske  similarly  dreams  away  his 
time  in  Avallon ;  and  in  a  lofty  mountain  in 
Thuringia,  the  great  Emperor  Frederic  Barba- 
rossa  slumbers  with  his  knights  around  him, 
until  the  time  comes  for  him  to  sally  forth  and 
raise  Germany  to  the  first  rank  among  the 
kingdoms  of  the  world.  The  same  story  is  told 
of  Olaf  Tryggvesson,  of  Don  Sebastian  of 
Portugal,  and  of  the  Moorish  King  Boabdil. 
The  Seven  Sleepers  of  Ephesus,  having  taken 
refuge  in  a  cave  from  the  persecutions  of  the 
heathen  Decius,  slept  one  hundred  and  sixty- 
four  years,  and  awoke  to  find  a  Christian  em- 
peror on  the  throne.  The  monk  of  Hilde- 
sheim,  in  the  legend  so  beautifully  rendered  by 
Longfellow,  doubting  how  with  God  a  thousand 
years  ago  could  be  as  yesterday,  listened  three 
minutes  entranced  by  the  singing  of  a  bird  in 
the  forest,  and  found,  on  waking  from  his  rev- 
erie, that  a  thousand  years  had  flown.  To  the 
same  family  of  legends  belong  the  notion  that 
St.  John  is  sleeping  at  Ephesus  until  the  last 
days  of  the  world ;  the  myth  of  the  enchanter 
Merlin,  spellbound  by  Vivien  ;  the  story  of 
the  Cretan  philosopher  Epimenides,  who  dozed 
away  fifty -seven  years  in  a  cave ;  and  Rip  Van 
Winkle's  nap  in  the  Catskills.1 

1  A  collection  of  these  interesting  legends  may  be  found 
in  Baring-Gould's  Curious  Myths  of  the  Middle  Ages,  of 
which  work  this  paper  was  originally  a  review. 

35 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

We  might  go  on  almost  indefinitely  citing 
household  tales  of  wonderful  sleepers  ;  but,  on 
the  principle  of  the  association  of  opposites,  we 
are  here  reminded  of  sundry  cases  of  marvellous 
life  and  wakefulness,  illustrated  in  the  Wander- 
ing Jew ;  the  dancers  of  Kolbeck ;  Joseph  of 
Arimathaea  with  the  Holy  Grail ;  the  Wild 
Huntsman,  who  to  all  eternity  chases  the  red 
deer ;  the  Captain  of  the  Phantom  Ship  ;  the 
classic  Tithonos ;  and  the  Man  in  the  Moon. 

The  lunar  spots  have  afforded  a  rich  subject 
for  the  play  of  human  fancy.  Plutarch  wrote  a 
treatise  on  them,  but  the  myth-makers  had 
been  before  him.  "  Every  one,"  says  Mr. 
Baring-Gould,  "  knows  that  the  moon  is  inhab- 
ited by  a  man  with  a  bundle  of  sticks  on  his 
back,  who  has  been  exiled  thither  for  many  cen- 
turies, and  who  is  so  far  off  that  he  is  beyond 
the  reach  of  death.  He  has  once  visited  this 
earth,  if  the  nursery  rhyme  is  to  be  credited 
when  it  asserts  that  — 

'  The  Man  in  the  Moon 
Came  down  too  soon 
And  asked  his  way  to  Norwich  ; ' 

but  whether  he  ever  reached  that  city  the  same 
authority  does  not  state."  Dante  calls  him 
Cain  ;  Chaucer  has  him  put  up  there  as  a  pun- 
ishment for  theft,  and  gives  him  a  thorn  bush 
to  carry  ;  Shakespeare  also  loads  him  with  the 
thorns,  but  by  way  of  compensation  gives  him 

36 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  FOLK-LORE 

a  dog  for  a  companion.  Ordinarily,  however, 
his  offence  is  stated  to  have  been,  not  stealing, 
but  Sabbath-breaking,  —  an  idea  derived  from 
the  Old  Testament.  Like  the  man  mentioned 
in  the  Book  of  Numbers,  he  is  caught  gather- 
ing sticks  on  the  Sabbath ;  and,  as  an  example 
to  mankind,  he  is  condemned  to  stand  forever 
in  the  moon,  with  his  bundle  on  his  back.  In- 
stead of  a  dog,  one  German  version  places  him 
with  a  woman,  whose  crime  was  churning  but- 
ter on  Sunday.  She  carries  her  butter- tub  ;  and 
this  brings  us  to  Mother  Goose  again  :  — 

"  Jack  and  Jill  went  up  the  hill 

To  get  a  pail  of  water. 
Jack  fell  down  and  broke  his  crown, 
And  Jill  came  tumbling  after." 

This  may  read  like  mere  nonsense ;  but  there 
is  a  point  of  view  from  which  it  may  be  safely 
said  that  there  is  very  little  absolute  nonsense 
in  the  world.  The  story  of  Jack  and  Jill  is  a 
venerable  one.  In  Icelandic  mythology  we  read 
that  Jack  and  Jill  were  two  children  whom  the 
moon  once  kidnapped  and  carried  up  to  heaven. 
They  had  been  drawing  water  in  a  bucket, 
which  they  were  carrying  by  means  of  a  pole 
placed  across  their  shoulders  ;  and  in  this  atti- 
tude they  have  stood  to  the  present  day  in  the 
moon.  Even  now  this  explanation  of  the  moon 
spots  is  to  be  heard  from  the  mouths  of  Swed- 
ish peasants.  They  fall  away  one  after  the 
37 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

other,  as  the  moon  wanes,  and  their  water-pail 
symbolizes  the  supposed  connection  of  the 
moon  with  rain-storms.  Other  forms  of  the 
myth  occur  in  Sanskrit. 

The  moon-goddess,  or  Aphrodite,  of  the 
ancient  Germans  was  called  Horsel,  or  Ursula, 
who  figures  in  Christian  mediaeval  mythology 
as  a  persecuted  saint,  attended  by  a  troop  of 
eleven  thousand  virgins,  who  all  suffer  martyr- 
dom as  they  journey  from  England  to  Cologne. 
The  meaning  of  the  myth  is  obvious.  In  Ger- 
man mythology,  England  is  the  Phaiakian  land 
of  clouds  and  phantoms ;  the  succubus^  leaving 
her  lover  before  daybreak,  excuses  herself  on 
the  plea  that  "  her  mother  is  calling  her  in 
England."  1  The  companions  of  Ursula  are  the 
pure  stars,  who  leave  the  cloudland  and  suffer 
martyrdom  as  they  approach  the  regions  of  day. 
In  the  Christian  tradition,  Ursula  is  the  pure 
Artemis ;  but,  in  accordance  with  her  ancient 
character,  she  is  likewise  the  sensual  Aphro- 
dite, who  haunts  the  Venusberg;  and  this 
brings  us  to  the  story  of  Tannhauser. 

The  Horselberg,  or  mountain  of  Venus,  lies 
in  Thuringia,  between  Eisenach  and  Gotha. 
High  up  on  its  slope  yawns  a  cavern,  the  Hor- 

1  See  Procopius,  De  Bella  Gothico,  iv.  20;  Villemarque, 
Barzas  Breiz,  i.  1 36.  As  a  child  I  was  instructed  by  an  old 
nurse  that  Van  Diemen's  Land  is  the  home  of  ghosts  and  de- 
parted spirits. 

38 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  FOLK-LORE 

selloch,  or  cave  of  Venus,  within  which  is  heard 
a  muffled  roar,  as  of  subterranean  water.  From 
this  cave,  in  old  times,  the  frightened  inhabitants 
of  the  neighbouring  valley  would  hear  at  night 
wild  moans  and  cries  issuing,  mingled  with  peals 
of  demon-like  laughter.  Here  it  was  believed 
that  Venus  held  her  court ;  "  and  there  were  not 
a  few  who  declared  that  they  had  seen  fair 
forms  of  female  beauty  beckoning  them  from 
the  mouth  of  the  chasm."  *  Tannhauser  was  a 
Prankish  knight  and  famous  minnesinger,  who, 
travelling  at  twilight  past  the  Horselberg,  "  saw 
a  white  glimmering  figure  of  matchless  beauty 
standing  before  him  and  beckoning  him  to  her." 
Leaving  his  horse,  he  went  up  to  meet  her, 
whom  he  knew  to  be  none  other  than  Venus. 
He  descended  to  her  palace  in  the  heart  of  the 
mountain,  and  there  passed  seven  years  in  care- 
less revelry.  Then,  stricken  with  remorse  and 
yearning  for  another  glimpse  of  the  pure  light 
of  day,  he  called  in  agony  upon  the  Virgin 
Mother,  who  took  compassion  on  him  and 
released  him.  He  sought  a  village  church,  and 
to  priest  after  priest  confessed  his  sin,  without 
obtaining  absolution,  until  finally  he  had  re- 
course to  the  Pope.  But  the  holy  father,  horri- 
fied at  the  enormity  of  his  misdoing,  declared 
that  guilt  such  as  his  could  never  be  remitted : 
sooner  should  the  staff  in  his  hand  grow  green 
2  Baring-Gould,  Curious  Myths,  vol.  i.  p.  197. 

39 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

and  blossom.  "  Then  Tannhauser,  full  of  de- 
spair and  with  his  soul  darkened,  went  away, 
and  returned  to  the  only  asylum  open  to  him, 
the  Venusberg.  But  lo !  three  days  after  he  had 
gone,  Pope  Urban  discovered  that  his  pastoral 
staff  had  put  forth  buds  and  had  burst  into 
flower.  Then  he  sent  messengers  after  Tann- 
hauser, and  they  reached  the  Horsel  vale  to 
hear  that  a  wayworn  man,  with  haggard  brow 
and  bowed  head,  had  just  entered  the  Horsel- 
loch.  Since  then  Tannhauser  has  not  been 
seen"  (p.  201). 

As  Mr.  Baring-Gould  rightly  observes,  this 
sad  legend,  in  its  Christianized  form,  is  doubt- 
less descriptive  of  the  struggle  between  the  new 
and  the  old  faiths.  The  knightly  Tannhauser, 
satiated  with  pagan  sensuality,  turns  to  Chris- 
tianity for  relief,  but,  repelled  by  the  hypocrisy, 
pride,  and  lack  of  sympathy  of  its  ministers, 
gives  up  in  despair,  and  returns  to  drown  his 
anxieties  in  his  old  debauchery. 

But  this  is  not  the  primitive  form  of  the 
myth,  which  recurs  in  the  folk-lore  of  every 
people  of  Aryan  descent.  Who,  indeed,  can  read 
it  without  being  at  once  reminded  of  Thomas 
of  Erceldoune  (or  Horsel-hill),  entranced  by 
the  sorceress  of  the  Eilden ;  of  the  nightly  vis- 
its of  Numa  to  the  grove  of  the  nymph  Ege- 
ria;  of  Odysseus  held  captive  by  the  Lady 
Kalypso ;  and,  last  but  not  least,  of  the  delight- 
40 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  FOLK-LORE 

ful  Arabian  tale  of  Prince  Ahmed  and  the  Peri 
Banou  ?  On  his  westward  journey,  Odysseus  is 
ensnared  and  kept  in  temporary  bondage  by  the 
amorous  nymph  of  darkness,  Kalypso  (KctXvTrnu, 
to  veil  or  cover).  So  the  zone  of  the  moon- 
goddess  Aphrodite  inveigles  all-seeing  Zeus  to 
treacherous  slumber  on  Mount  Ida  ;  and  by  a 
similar  sorcery  Tasso's  great  hero  is  lulled  in 
unseemly  idleness  in  Armida's  golden  paradise, 
at  the  western  verge  of  the  world.  The  dis- 
appearance of  Tannhauser  behind  the  moonlit 
cliff,  lured  by  Venus  Ursula,  the  pale  goddess 
of  night,  is  a  precisely  parallel  circumstance. 

But  solar  and  lunar  phenomena  are  by  no 
means  the  only  sources  of  popular  mythology. 
Opposite  my  writing-table  hangs  a  quaint  Ger- 
man picture,  illustrating  Goethe's  ballad  of  the 
Erlking,  in  which  the  whole  wild  pathos  of  the 
story  is  compressed  into  one  supreme  moment ; 
we  see  the  fearful,  half-gliding  rush  of  the  Erl- 
king, his  long,  spectral  arms  outstretched  to 
grasp  the  child,  the  frantic  gallop  of  the  horse, 
the  alarmed  father  clasping  his  darling  to  his 
bosom  in  convulsive  embrace,  the  siren-like 
elves  hovering  overhead,  to  lure  the  little  soul 
with  their  weird  harps.  There  can  be  no  better 
illustration  than  is  furnished  by  this  terrible 
scene  of  the  magic  power  of  mythology  to  in- 
vest the  simplest  physical  phenomena  with  the 
most  intense  human  interest ;  for  the  true  sig- 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

nificance  of  the  whole  picture  is  contained  in 
the  father's  address  to  his  child,  — 

et  Sei  ruhig,  bleibe  ruhig,  mein  Kind  ; 
In  diirren  Blattern  sauselt  der  Wind." 

The  story  of  the  Piper  of  Hamelin,  well 
known  in  the  version  of  Robert  Browning,  leads 
to  the  same  conclusion.  In  1284  the  good  peo- 
ple of  Hamelin  could  obtain  no  rest,  night  or 
day,  by  reason  of  the  direful  host  of  rats  which 
infested  their  town.  One  day  came  a  strange 
man  in  a  bunting  suit,  and  offered  for  five  hun- 
dred guilders  to  rid  the  town  of  the  vermin. 
The  people  agreed :  whereupon  the  man  took 
out  a  pipe  and  piped,  and  instantly  all  the  rats 
in  town,  in  an  army  which  blackened  the  face 
of  the  earth,  came  forth  from  their  haunts,  and 
followed  the  piper  until  he  piped  them  to  the 
river  Weser,  where  they  all  jumped  in  and  were 
drowned.  But  as  soon  as  the  torment  was  gone, 
the  townsfolk  refused  to  pay  the  piper,  on  the 
ground  that  he  was  evidently  a  wizard.  He  went 
away,  vowing  vengeance,  and  on  St.  John's  day 
reappeared,  and  putting  his  pipe  to  his  mouth 
blew  a  different  air.  Whereat  all  the  little, 
plump,  rosy-cheeked,  golden-haired  children 
came  merrily  running  after  him,  their  parents 
standing  aghast,  not  knowing  what  to  do,  while 
he  led  them  up  a  hill  in  the  neighbourhood. 
A  door  opened  in  the  mountain-side,  through 
which  he  led  them  in,  and  they  never  were 
42 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  FOLK-LORE 

seen  again ;  save  one  lame  boy,  who  hobbled 
not  fast  enough  to  get  in  before  the  door  shut, 
and  who  lamented  for  the  rest  of  his  life  that  he 
had  not  been  able  to  share  the  rare  luck  of  his 
comrades.  In  the  street  through  which  this 
procession  passed  no  music  was  ever  afterward 
allowed  to  be  played.  For  a  long  time  the  town 
dated  its  public  documents  from  this  fearful 
calamity,  and  many  authorities  have  treated  it 
as  an  historical  event.1  Similar  stories  are  told 
of  other  towns  in  Germany,  and,  strange  to  say, 
in  remote  Abyssinia  also.  Wesleyan  peasants 
in  England  believe  that  angels  pipe  to  children 
who  are  about  to  die ;  and  in  Scandinavia  youths 
are  said  to  have  been  enticed  away  by  the  songs 
of  elf-maidens.  In  Greece  the  sirens  by  their 
magic  lay  allured  voyagers  to  destruction ;  and 
Orpheus  caused  the  trees  and  dumb  beasts  to 
follow  him.  Here  we  reach  the  explanation. 
For  Orpheus  is  the  wind  sighing  through  un- 
told acres  of  pine  forest.  "  The  piper  is  no 
other  than  the  wind,  and  the  ancients  held  that 
in  the  wind  were  the  souls  of  the  dead."  To 
this  day  the  English  peasantry  believe  that  they 
hear  the  wail  of  the  spirits  of  unbaptized  chil- 
dren, as  the  gale  sweeps  past  their  cottage  doors. 
The  Greek  Hermes  resulted  from  the  fusion 
of  two  deities.  He  is  the  sun  and  also  the  wind  ,• 

2  Hence  perhaps  the  adage,  "  Always  remember  to  pay 
the  piper." 

43 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

and  in  the  latter  capacity  he  bears  away  the 
souls  of  the  dead.  So  the  Norse  Odin,  who  like 
Hermes  fulfils  a  double  function,  is  supposed 
to  rush  at  night  over  the  treetops,  "accom- 
panied by  the  scudding  train  of  brave  men's 
spirits."  And  readers  of  recent  French  litera- 
ture cannot  fail  to  remember  Erckmann-Cha- 
trian's  terrible  story  of  the  wild  huntsman 
Vittikab,  and  how  he  sped  through  the  forest, 
carrying  away  a  young  girl's  soul. 

Thus,  as  Tannhauser  is  the  Northern  Ulys- 
ses, so  is  Goethe's  Erlking  none  other  than  the 
Piper  of  Hamelin.  And  the  piper,  in  turn,  is 
the  classic  Hermes  or  Orpheus,  the  counterpart 
of  the  Finnish  Wainamoinen  and  the  Sanskrit 
Gunadhya.  His  wonderful  pipe  is  the  horn 
of  Oberon,  the  lyre  of  Apollo  (who,  like  the 
piper,  was  a  rat-killer),  the  harp  stolen  by  Jack 
when  he  climbed  the  bean-stalk  to  the  ogre's 
castle.1  And  the  father,  in  Goethe's  ballad,  is  no 
more  than  right  when  he  assures  his  child  that  the 
siren  voice  which  tempts  him  is  but  the  rustle  of 
the  wind  among  the  dried  leaves  ;  for  from  such 
a  simple  class  of  phenomena  arose  this  entire 
family  of  charming  legends. 

1  And  it  reappears  as  the  mysterious  lyre  of  the  Gaelic 
musician,  who  — 

"  Could  harp  a  fish  out  o'  the  water, 
Or  bluid  out  of  a  stane, 
Or  milk  out  of  a  maiden's  breast, 
That  bairns  had  never  nane." 

44 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  FOLK-LORE 

But  why  does  the  piper,  who  is  a  leader  of 
souls  (Psycho-pompQs\  also  draw  rats  after  him  ? 
In  answering  this  we  shall  have  occasion  to  note 
that  the  ancients  by  no  means  shared  that  curi- 
ous prejudice  against  the  brute  creation  which 
is  indulged  in  by  modern  anti-Darwinians.  In 
many  countries  rats  and  mice  have  been  re- 
garded as  sacred  animals  ;  but  in  Germany  they 
were  thought  to  represent  the  human  soul.  One 
story  out  of  a  hundred  must  suffice  to  illustrate 
this.  "In  Thuringia,  at  Saalfeld,  a  servant-girl 
fell  asleep  whilst  her  companions  were  shelling 
nuts.  They  observed  a  little  red  mouse  creep 
from  her  mouth  and  run  out  of  the  window. 
One  of  the  fellows  present  shook  the  sleeper, 
but  could  not  wake  her,  so  he  moved  her  to 
another  place.  Presently  the  mouse  ran  back  to 
the  former  place  and  dashed  about,  seeking  the 
girl ;  not  finding  her,  it  vanished  ;  at  the  same 
moment  the  girl  died."  1  This  completes  the 
explanation  of  the  piper,  and  it  also  furnishes 
the  key  to  the  horrible  story  of  Bishop  Hatto. 

This  wicked  prelate  lived  on  the  bank  of  the 
Rhine,  in  the  middle  of  which  stream  he  pos- 
sessed a  tower,  now  pointed  out  to  travellers  as 
the  Mouse  Tower.  In  the  year  970  there  was 
a  dreadful  famine,  and  people  came  from  far 
and  near  craving  sustenance  out  of  the  Bishop's 
ample  and  well-filled  granaries.  Well,  he  told 

,   *  Baring-Gould,  Curious  Myths,  vol.  ii.  p.  159. 

45 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

them  all  to  go  into  the  barn,  and  when  they  had 
got  in  there,  as  many  as  could  stand,  he  set  fire  to 
the  barn  and  burnt  them  all  up,  and  went  home 
to  eat  a  merry  supper.  But  when  he  arose  next 
morning,  he  heard  that  an  army  of  rats  had  eaten 
all  the  corn  in  his  granaries,  and  was  now  ad- 
vancing to  storm  the  palace.  Looking  from  his 
window,  he  saw  the  roads  and  fields  dark  with 
them,  as  they  came  with  fell  purpose  straight 
toward  his  mansion.  In  frenzied  terror  he  took 
his  boat  and  rowed  out  to  the  tower  in  the  river. 
But  it  was  of  no  use :  down  into  the  water 
marched  the  rats,  and  swam  across,  and  scaled 
the  walls,  and  gnawed  through  the  stones,  and 
came  swarming  in  about  the  shrieking  Bishop, 
and  ate  him  up,  flesh,  bones,  and  all.  Now, 
bearing  in  mind  what  was  said  above,  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  these  rats  were  the  souls  of 
those  whom  the  Bishop  had  murdered.  There 
are  many  versions  of  the  story  in  different 
Teutonic  countries,  and  in  some  of  them  the 
avenging  rats  or  mice  issue  directly,  by  a  strange 
metamorphosis,  from  the  corpses  of  the  victims. 
St.  Gertrude,  moreover,  the  heathen  Holda, 
was  symbolized  as  a  mouse,  and  was  said  to  lead 
an  army  of  mice ;  she  was  the  receiver  of  chil- 
dren's souls.  Odin,  also,  in  his  character  of  a 
Psychopompos,  was  followed  by  a  host  of  rats.1 

1  Perhaps  we  may  trace  back  to  this  source  the  frantic  ter- 
ror which  Irish  servant-girls  often  manifest  at  sight  of  a  mouse. 

46 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  FOLK-LORE 

As  the  souls  of  the  departed  are  symbolized 
as  rats,  so  is  the  psychopomp  himself  often 
figured  as  a  dog.  Sarameias,  the  Vedic  counter- 
part of  Hermes  and  Odin,  sometimes  appears 
invested  with  canine  attributes  ;  and  countless 
other  examples  go  to  show  that  by  the  early 
Aryan  mind  the  howling  wind  was  conceived  as  a 
great  dog  or  wolf.  As  the  fearful  beast  was  heard 
speeding  by  the  windows  or  over  the  housetop, 
the  inmates  trembled,  for  none  knew  but  his 
own  soul  might  forthwith  be  required  of  him. 
Hence,  to  this  day,  among  ignorant  people,  the 
howling  of  a  dog  under  the  window  is  supposed 
to  portend  a  death  in  the  family.  It  is  the  fleet 
greyhound  of  Hermes,  come  to  escort  the  soul 
to  the  river  Styx.1 

But  the  wind-god  is  not  always  so  terrible. 
Nothing  can  be  more  transparent  than  the 
phraseology  of  the  Homeric  Hymn,  in  which 
Hermes  is  described  as  acquiring  the  strength 
of  a  giant  while  yet  a  babe  in  the  cradle,  as 
sallying  out  and  stealing  the  cattle  (clouds)  of 
Apollo,  and  driving  them  helter-skelter  in  va- 
rious directions,  then  as  crawling  through  the 
keyhole,  and  with  a  mocking  laugh  shrinking 

1  In  Persia  a  dog  is  brought  to  the  bedside  of  the  person 
who  is  dying,  in  order  that  the  soul  may  be  sure  of  a  prompt 
escort.  The  same  custom  exists  in  India.  Breal,  Hercule 
et  Cacus,  p.  123. 


47 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

into  his  cradle.  He- is  the  Master  Thief,  who 
can  steal  the  burgomaster's  horse  from  under 
him  and  his  wife's  mantle  from  off  her  back, 
the  prototype  not  only  of  the  crafty  architect  of 
Rhampsinitos,  but  even  of  the  ungrateful  slave 
who  robs  Sancho  of  his  mule  in  the  Sierra 
Morena.  He  furnishes  in  part  the  conceptions 
of  Boots  and  Reynard  ;  he  is  the  prototype  of 
Paul  Pry  and  peeping  Tom  of  Coventry  ;  and 
in  virtue  of  his  ability  to  contract  or  expand 
himself  at  pleasure,  he  is  both  the  Devil  in  the 
Norse  Tale,1  whom  the  lad  persuades  to  enter 
a  walnut,  and  the  Arabian  Efreet,  whom  the 
fisherman  releases  from  the  bottle. 

The  very  interesting  series  of  myths  and  pop- 
ular superstitions  suggested  by  the  storm-cloud 
and  the  lightning  must  be  reserved  for  a  future 
occasion.  When  carefully  examined,  they  will 
richly  illustrate  the  conclusion  which  is  the  re- 
sult of  the  present  inquiry,  that  the  marvellous 
tales  and  quaint  superstitions  current  in  every 
Aryan  household  have  a  common  origin  with 
the  classic  legends  of  gods  and  heroes,  which 
formerly  were  alone  thought  worthy  of  the 
student's  serious  attention.  These  stories  — 
some  of  them  familiar  to  us  in  infancy,  others 

1  The  Devil,  who  is  proverbially  «'  active  in  a  gale  of 
wind,"  is  none  other  than  Hermes. 


48 


THE  ORIGINS  OF  FOLK-LORE 

the  delight  of  our  maturer  years  —  constitute 
the  debris,  or  alluvium,  brought  down  by  the 
stream  of  tradition  from  the  distant  highlands 
of  ancient  mythology. 

September,  1870. 


49 


II 

THE  DESCENT  OF  FIRE 

IN  the  course  of  my  last  summer's  vaca- 
tion, which  was  spent  at  a  small  inland 
village,  I  came  upon  an  unexpected  illus- 
tration of  the  tenacity  with  which  conceptions 
descended  from  prehistoric  antiquity  have  now 
and  then  kept  their  hold  upon  life.  While  sit- 
ting one  evening  under  the  trees  by  the  road- 
side, my  attention  was  called  to  the  unusual 
conduct  of  half  a  dozen  men  and  boys  who 
were  standing  opposite.  An  elderly  man  was 
moving  slowly  up  and  down  the  road,  holding 
with  both  hands  a  forked  twig  of  hazel,  shaped 
like  the  letter  Y  inverted.  With  his  palms 
turned  upward,  he  held  in  each  hand  a  branch 
of  the  twig  in  such  a  way  that  the  shank  pointed 
upward  ;  but  every  few  moments,  as  he  halted 
over  a  certain  spot,  the  twig  would  gradually 
bend  downwards  until  it  had  assumed  the  like- 
ness of  a  Y  in  its  natural  position,  where  it 
would  remain  pointing  to  something  in  the 
ground  beneath.  One  by  one  the  bystanders 
proceeded  to  try  the  experiment,  but  with  no 
variation  in  the  result.  Something  in  the  ground 
50 


THE  DESCENT  OF  FIRE 

seemed  to  fascinate  the  bit  of  hazel,  for  it  could 
not  pass  over  that  spot  without  bending  down 
and  pointing  to  it. 

My  thoughts  reverted  at  once  to  Jacques 
Aymar  and  Dousterswivel,  as  I  perceived  that 
these  men  were  engaged  in  sorcery.  During  the 
long  drought  more  than  half  the  wells  in  the 
village  had  become  dry,  and  here  was  an  attempt 
to  make  good  the  loss  by  the  aid  of  the  god 
Thor.  These  men  were  seeking  water  with  a 


divining  rod.  Here,  alive  before  my  eyes,  was  a 
superstitious  observance,  which  I  had  supposed 
long  since  dead  and  forgotten  by  all  men  except 
students  interested  in  mythology. 

As  I  crossed  the  road  to  take  part  in  the 
ceremony  a  farmer's  boy  came  up,  stoutly  affirm- 
ing his  incredulity,  and  offering  to  show  the 

5* 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

company  how  he  could  carry  the  rod  motion- 
less across  the  charmed  spot.  But  when  he 
came  to  take  the  weird  twig  he  trembled  with 
an  ill-defined  feeling  of  insecurity  as  to  the 
soundness  of  his  conclusions,  and  when  he 
stood  over  the  supposed  rivulet  the  rod  bent 
in  spite  of  him,  —  as  was  not  so  very  strange ; 
for,  with  all  his  vague  scepticism,  the  honest 
lad  had  not,  and  could  not  be  supposed  to  have, 
the/0*  scientifique  of  which  Littre  speaks.1 

Hereupon  I  requested  leave  to  try  the  rod ; 
but  something  in  my  manner  seemed  at  once  to 
excite  the  suspicion  and  scorn  of  the  sorcerer. 
"  Yes,  take  it,"  said  he,  with  uncalled-for  vehe- 
mence, "  but  you  can't  stop  it ;  there  's  water 
below  here,  and  you  can't  help  its  bending,  if 
you  break  your  back  trying  to  hold  it."  So  he 
gave  me  the  twig,  and  awaited,  with  a  smile 
which  was  meant  to  express  withering  sarcasm, 
the  discomfiture  of  the  supposed  scoffer.  But 
when  I  proceeded  to  walk  four  or  five  times 
across  the  mysterious  place,  the  rod  pointing 
steadfastly  toward  the  zenith  all  the  while,  our 
friend  became  grave  and  began  to  philosophize. 
"  Well,"  said  he,  "  you  see  your  temperament 

1  «« II  faut  que  la  cceur  devienne  ancien  parmi  les  anciennes 
choses,  et  la  plenitude  de  1'histoire  ne  se  devoile  qu'a  celui 
qui  descend,  ainsi  dispose,  dans  le  passe.  Mais  il  faut  que 
1'esprit  demeure  moderne,  et  n'oublie  jamais  qu'il  n'y  a  pour 
lui  d'autre  foi  que  la  foi  scientifique."  Littre. 

52 


THE  DESCENT  OF  FIRE 

is  peculiar ;  the  conditions  ain't  favourable  in 
your  case  ;  there  are  some  people  who  never 
can  work  these  things.  But  there  's  water  below 
here,  for  all  that,  as  you  '11  find,  if  you  dig  for 
it ;  there  's  nothing  like  a  hazel  rod  for  finding 
out  water." 

Very  true  :  there  are  some  persons  who  never 
can  make  such  things  work ;  who  somehow 
always  encounter  "  unfavourable  conditions  " 
when  they  wish  to  test  the  marvellous  powers 
of  a  clairvoyant ;  who  never  can  make  "  Plan- 
chette  "  move  in  conformity  to  the  requirements 
of  any  known  alphabet ;  who  never  see  ghosts, 
and  never  have  "  presentiments,"  save  such  as 
are  obviously  due  to  association  of  ideas.  The 
ill-success  of  these  persons  is  commonly  ascribed 
to  their  lack  of  faith  ;  but,  in  the  majority  of 
cases,  it  might  be  more  truly  referred  to  the 
strength  of  their  faith,  —  faith  in  the  constancy 
of  nature,  and  in  the  adequacy  of  ordinary  hu- 
man experience  as  interpreted  by  science.1  La 
foi  scientifique  is  an  excellent  preventive  against 
that  obscure,  though  not  uncommon,  kind  of 
self-deception  which  enables  wooden  tripods 
to  write  and  tables  to  tip  and  hazel  twigs  to 
twist  upside  down,  without  the  conscious  inter- 

1  For  an  admirable  example  of  scientific  self-analysis  tracing 
t/ne  of  these  illusions  to  its  psychological  sources,  see  the  ac- 
count of  Dr.  Lazarus,  in  Taine,  De  I'  Intelligence  t  vol.  i* 
pp.  121-125. 

53 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

vention  of  the  performer.  It  was  this  kind  of 
faith,  no  doubt,  which  caused  the  discomfiture 
of  Jacques  Aymar  on  his  visit  to  Paris,1  and 
which  has  in  late  years  prevented  persons  from 
obtaining  the  handsome  prize  offered  by  the 
French  Academy  for  the  first  authentic  case  of 
clairvoyance. 

But  our  village  friend,  though  perhaps  con- 
structively right  in  his  philosophizing,  was  cer- 
tainly very  defective  in  his  acquaintance  with  the 
time-honoured  art  of  rhabdomancy.  Had  he 
extended  his  inquiries  so  as  to  cover  the  field  of 
Indo-European  tradition,  he  would  have  learned 
that  the  mountain-ash,  the  mistletoe,  the  white 
and  black  thorn,  the  Hindu  asvattha,  and  sev- 
eral other  woods  are  quite  as  efficient  as  the 
hazel  for  the  purpose  of  detecting  water  in  times 
of  drought ;  and  in  due  course  of  time  he  would 
have  perceived  that  the  divining  rod  itself  is 
but  one  among  a  large  class  of  things  to  which 
popular  belief  has  ascribed,  along  with  other 
talismanic  properties,  the  power  of  opening 
the  ground  or  cleaving  rocks,  in  order  to  reveal 
hidden  treasures.  Leaving  him  in  peace,  then, 
with  his  bit  of  forked  hazel,  to  seek  for  cooling 

1  See  the  story  of  Aymar  in  Baring-Gould,  Curious  Myths, 
vol.  i.  pp.  57—77.  The  learned  author  attributes  the  dis- 
comfiture to  the  uncongenial  Parisian  environment ;  which  is 
a  style  of  reasoning  much  like  that  of  my  village  sorcerer,  I 
fear. 

54 


THE  DESCENT  OF  FIRE 

springs  in  some  future  thirsty  season,  let  us  en- 
deavour to  elucidate  the  origin  of  this  curious 
superstition. 

The  detection  of  subterranean  water  is  by  no 
means  the  only  use  to  which  the  divining  rod 
has  been  put.  Among  the  ancient  Frisians  it 
was  regularly  used  for  the  detection  of  criminals  ; 
and  the  reputation  of  Jacques  Aymar  was  won 
by  his  discovery  of  the  perpetrator  of  a  horrible 
murder  at  Lyons.  Throughout  Europe  it  has 
been  used  from  time  immemorial  by  miners 
for  ascertaining  the  position  of  veins  of  metal ; 
and  in  the  days  when  talents  were  wrapped  in 
napkins  and  buried  in  the  field,  instead  of  being 
exposed  to  the  risks  of  financial  speculation,  the 
divining  rod  was  employed  by  persons  covetous 
of  their  neighbours'  wealth.  If  Boulatruelle  had 
lived  in  the  sixteenth  century,  he  would  have 
taken  a  forked  stick  of  hazel  when  he  went  to 
search  for  the  buried  treasures  of  Jean  Valjean. 
It  has  also  been  applied  to  the  cure  of  disease, 
and  has  been  kept  in  households,  like  a  wizard's 
charm,  to  insure  general  good-fortune  and  im- 
munity from  disaster. 

As  we  follow  the  conception  further  into  the 
elfland  of  popular  tradition,  we  come  upon  a 
rod  which  not  only  points  out  the  situation  of 
hidden  treasure,  but  even  splits  open  the  ground 
and  reveals  the  mineral  wealth  contained  therein. 
In  German  legend,  "  a  shepherd,  who  was  driv- 
55 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

ing  his  flock  over  the  Ilsenstein,  having  stopped 
to  rest,  leaning  on  his  staff,  the  mountain  sud- 
denly opened,  for  there  was  a  springwort  in  his 
staff  without  his  knowing  it,  and  the  princess 
[Use]  stood  before  him.  She  bade  him  follow 
her,  and  when  he  was  inside  the  mountain  she 
told  him  to  take  as  much  gold  as  he  pleased. 
The  shepherd  filled  all  his  pockets,  and  was 
going  away,  when  the  princess  called  after  him, 
c  Forget  not  the  best.'  So,  thinking  she  meant 
that  he  had  not  taken  enough,  he  filled  his  hat 
also  ;  but  what  she  meant  was  his  staff  with  the 
springwort,  which  he  had  laid  against  the  wall 
as  soon  as  he  stepped  in.  But  now,  just  as  he 
was  going  out  at  the  opening,  the  rock  suddenly 
slammed  together  and  cut  him  in  two."  ] 

Here  the  rod  derives  its  marvellous  proper- 
ties from  the  inclosed  springwort,  but  in  many 
cases  a  leaf  or  flower  is  itself  competent  to  open 
the  hillside.  The  little  blue  flower,  forget-me- 
not,  about  which  so  many  sentimental  associa- 
tions have  clustered,  owes  its  name  to  the  legends 
told  of  its  talismanic  virtues.2  A  man,  travel- 
ling on  a  lonely  mountain,  picks  up  a  little  blue 
flower  and  sticks  it  in  his  hat.  Forthwith'  an 
iron  door  opens,  showing  up  a  lighted  passage- 
way, through  which  the  man  advances  into  a 

1  Kelly,  Indo- European  Folk- Lore,  p.  177. 

2  The  story  of  the  luck -flower  is  well  told  in  verse  by  Mr. 
Baring-Gould,  in  his  Silver  Store,  p.  115,  seq. 


THE  DESCENT  OF  FIRE 

magnificent  hall,  where  rubies  and  diamonds  and 
all  other  kinds  of  gems  are  lying  piled  in  great 
heaps  on  the  floor.  As  he  eagerly  fills  his  pock- 
ets his  hat  drops  from  his  head,  and  when  he 
turns  to  go  out  the  little  flower  calls  after  him, 
"  Forget  me  not !  "  He  turns  back  and  looks 
around,  but  is  too  bewildered  with  his  good  for- 
tune to  think  of  his  bare  head  or  of  the  luck- 
flower  which  he  has  let  fall.  He  selects  several 
more  of  the  finest  jewels  he  can  find,  and  again 
starts  to  go  out ;  but  as  he  passes  through  the 
door  the  mountain  closes  amid  the  crashing  of 
thunder,  and  cuts  off  one  of  his  heels.  Alone, 
in  the  gloom  of  the  forest,  he  searches  in  vain 
for  the  mysterious  door  :  it  has  disappeared  for- 
ever, and  the  traveller  goes  on  his  way,  thank- 
ful, let  us  hope,  that  he  has  fared  no  worse. 

Sometimes  it  is  a  white  lady,  like  the  Princess 
Use,  who  invites  the  finder  of  the  luck-flower 
to  help  himself  to  her  treasures,  and  who  utters 
the  enigmatical  warning.  The  mountain  where 
the  event  occurred  may  be  found  almost  any- 
where in  Germany,  and  one  just  like  it  stood  in 
Persia,  in  the  golden  prime  of  Haroun  Al- 
raschid.  In  the  story  of  the  Forty  Thieves,  the 
mere  name  of  the  plant  sesame  serves  as  a  talis- 
man to  open  and  shut  the  secret  door  which 
leads  into  the  robbers'  cavern  ;  and  when  the 
avaricious  Cassim  Baba,  absorbed  in  the  con- 
templation of  the  bags  of  gold  and  bales  of  rich 
57 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

merchandise,  forgets  the  magic  formula,  he  meets 
no  better  fate  than  the  shepherd  of  the  Ilsen- 
stein.  In  the  story  of  Prince  Ahmed,  it  is  an 
enchanted  arrow  which  guides  the  young  ad- 
venturer through  the  hillside  to  the  grotto  of 
the  Peri  Banou.  In  the  tale  of  Baba  Abdallah, 
it  is  an  ointment  rubbed  on  the  eyelid  which 
reveals  at  a  single  glance  all  the  treasures  hid- 
den in  the  bowels  of  the  earth. 

The  ancient  Romans  also  had  their  rock- 
breaking  plant,  called  Saxifragay  or  "  sassafras." 
And  the  further  we  penetrate  into  this  charmed 
circle  of  traditions  the  more  evident  does  it  ap- 
pear that  the  power  of  cleaving  rocks  or  shat- 
tering hard  substances  enters,  as  a  primitive 
element,  into  the  conception  of  these  treasure- 
showing  talismans.  Mr.  Baring-Gould  has  given 
an  excellent  account  of  the  rabbinical  legends 
concerning  the  wonderful  schamir,  by  the  aid 
of  which  Solomon  was  said  to  have  built  his 
temple.  From  Asmodeus,  prince  of  the  Jann, 
Benaiah,  the  son  of  Jehoiada,  wrested  the  secret 
of  a  worm  no  bigger  than  a  barley-corn,  which 
could  split  the  hardest  substance.  This  worm 
was  called  schamir.  "If  Solomon  desired  to 
possess  himself  of  the  worm,  he  must  find  the 
nest  of  the  moor-hen,  and  cover  it  with  a  plate 
of  glass,  so  that  the  mother  bird  could  not  get 
at  her  young  without  breaking  the  glass.  She 
would  seek  schamir  for  the  purpose,  and  the 


THE  DESCENT  OF  FIRE 

worm  must  be  obtained  from  her."  As  the 
Jewish  king  did  need  the  worm  in  order  to  hew 
the  stones  for  that  temple  which  was  to  be  built 
without  sound  of  hammer,  or  axe,  or  any  tool  of 
iron,1  he  sent  Benaiah  to  obtain  it.  According 
to  another  account,  schamirwas  a  mystic  stone 
which  enabled  Solomon  to  penetrate  the  earth  in 
search  of  mineral  wealth.  Directed  by  a  Jinni, 
the  wise  king  covered  a  raven's  eggs  with  a 
plate  of  crystal,  and  thus  obtained  schamir  which 
the  bird  brought  in  order  to  break  the  plate.2 

In  these  traditions,  which  may  possibly  be 
of  Aryan  descent,  due  to  the  prolonged  inter- 
course between  the  Jews  and  the  Persians,  a  new 
feature  is  added  to  those  before  enumerated :  the 
rock-splitting  talisman  is  always  found  in  the 
possession  of  a  bird.  The  same  feature  in  the 
myth  reappears  on  Aryan  soil.  The  springwort, 
whose  marvellous  powers  we  have  noticed  in 
the  case  of  the  Ilsenstein  shepherd,  is  obtained, 
according  to  Pliny,  by  stopping  up  the  hole  in 
a  tree  where  a  woodpecker  keeps  its  young. 
The  bird  flies  away,  and  presently  returns  with 

1  i  Kings  vi.  7. 

2  Compare  the  Mussulman  account  of  the  building  of  the 
temple,   in   Baring-Gould,    Legends  of  the   Patriarchs  ana 
Prophets,  pp.  337,  338.    And  see  the  story  of  Diocletian's 
ostrich,  Swan,  Gesta  Romanorum,  ed.  Wright,  vol.  i.  p.  Ixiv. 
See,  also,  the  pretty  story  of  the  knight  unjustly  imprisoned, 
id.  p.  cii. 

59 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

the  springwort,  which  it  applies  to  the  plug, 
causing  it  to  shoot  out  with  a  loud  explosion. 
The  same  account  is  given  in  German  folk-lore. 
Elsewhere,  as  in  Iceland,  Normandy,  and  an- 
cient Greece,  the  bird  is  an  eagle,  a  swallow,  an 
ostrich,  or  a  hoopoe. 

In  the  Icelandic  and  Pomeranian  myths  the 
schamir,  or  "  raven-stone,"  also  renders  its  pos- 
sessor invisible,  —  a  property  which  it  shares 
with  one  of  the  treasure-finding  plants,  the  fern.1 
In  this  respect  it  resembles  the  ring  of  Gyges, 
as  in  its  divining  and  rock-splitting  qualities  it 
resembles  that  other  ring  which  the  African 
magician  gave  to  Aladdin,  to  enable  him  to  de- 
scend into  the  cavern  where  stood  the  wonder- 
ful lamp. 

In  the  north  of  Europe  schamir  appears 
strangely  and  grotesquely  metamorphosed.  The 
hand  of  a  man  that  has  been  hanged,  when  dried 

1  "  We  have  the  receipt  of  fern-seed.  We  walk  invisible." 
Shakespeare,  Henry  IF.  See  Ralston,  Songs  of  the  Russian 
People,  p.  98. 

According  to  one  North  German  tradition,  the  luck-flower 
also  will  make  its  finder  invisible  at  pleasure.  But,  as  the 
myth  shrewdly  adds,  it  is  absolutely  essential  that  the  flower 
be  found  by  accident  :  he  who  seeks  for  it  never  finds  it! 
Thus  all  cavils  are  skilfully  forestalled,  even  if  not  satisfactorily 
disposed  of.  The  same  kind  of  reasoning  is  favoured  by  our 
.modern  dealers  in  mystery  :  somehow  the  "conditions  "  al- 
ways are  askew  whenever  a  scientific  observer  wishes  to  test 
their  pretensions. 

60 


THE  DESCENT  OF  FIRE 

and  prepared  with  certain  weird  unguents  and 
set  on  fire,  is  known  as  the  Hand  of  Glory ; 
and  as  it  not  only  bursts  open  all  safe  locks, 
but  also  lulls  to  sleep  all  persons  within  the 
circle  of  its  influence,  it  is  of  course  invaluable 
to  thieves  and  burglars.  I  quote  the  following 
story  from  Thorpe's  "  Northern  Mythology  :  " 
"  Two  fellows  once  came  to  Huy,  who  pre- 
tended to  be  exceedingly  fatigued,  and  when 
they  had  supped  would  not  retire  to  a  sleeping- 
room,  but  begged  their  host  would  allow  them 
to  take  a  nap  on  the  hearth.  But  the  maid- 
servant, who  did  not  like  the  looks  of  the  two 
guests,  remained  by  the  kitchen  door  and 
peeped  through  a  chink,  when  she  saw  that  one 
of  them  drew  a  thief's  hand  from  his  pocket., 
the  fingers  of  which,  after  having  rubbed  them 
with  an  ointment,  he  lighted,  and  they  all  burned 
except  one.  Again  they  held  this  finger  to  the 
fire,  but  still  it  would  not  burn,  at  which  they 
appeared  much  surprised,  and  one  said, l  There 
must  surely  be  some  one  in  the  house  who  is 
not  yet  asleep.'  They  then  hung  the  hand  with 
its  four  burning  fingers  by  the  chimney,  and 
went  out  to  call  their  associates.  But  the  maid 
followed  them  instantly  and  made  the  door  fast, 
then  ran  upstairs,  where  the  landlord  slept, 
that  she  might  wake  him,  but  was  unable,  not- 
withstanding all  her  shaking  and  calling.  In 
the  mean  time  the  thieves  had  returned  and 
61 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

were  endeavouring  to  enter  the  house  by  a  win- 
dow, but  the  maid  cast  them  down  from  the 
ladder.  They  then  took  a  different  course,  and 
would  have  forced  an  entrance,  had  it  not  oc- 
curred to  the  maid  that  the  burning  fingers 
might  probably  be  the  cause  of  her  master's 
profound  sleep.  Impressed  with  this  idea  she 
ran  to  the  kitchen  and  blew  them  out,  when  the 
master  and  his  men-servants  instantly  awoke, 
and  soon  drove  away  the  robbers."  The  same 
event  is  said  to  have  occurred  at  Stainmore  in 
England  ;  and  Torquemada  relates  of  Mexican 
thieves  that  they  carry  with  them  the  left  hand 
of  a  woman  who  has  died  in  her  first  childbed, 
before  which  talisman  all  bolts  yield  and  all 
opposition  is  benumbed.  In  1831  u  some  Irish 
thieves  attempted  to  commit  a  robbery  on  the 
estate  of  Mr.  Naper,  of  Loughcrew,  county 
Meath.  They  entered  the  house  armed  with  a 
dead  man's  hand  with  a  lighted  candle  in  it,  be- 
lieving in  the  superstitious  notion  that  a  candle 
placed  in  a  dead  man's  hand  will  not  be  seen 
by  any  but  those  by  whom  it  is  used  ;  and  also 
that  if  a  candle  in  a  dead  hand  be  introduced 
into  a  house,  it  will  prevent  those  who  may  be 
asleep  from  awaking.  The  inmates,  however, 
were  alarmed,  and  the  robbers  fled,  leaving  the 
hand  behind  them."  l 

1  Henderson,  Folk-Lore  of  the  Northern  Counties  of  Eng- 
land t  p.  202. 

62 


THE  DESCENT  OF  FIRE 

In  the  Middle  Ages  the  hand  of  glory  was 
used,  just  like  the  divining  rod,  for  the  detec- 
tion of  buried  treasures. 

Here,  then,  we  have  a  large  and  motley  group 
of  objects  —  the  forked  rod  of  ash  or  hazel,  the 
springwort  and  the  luck-flower,  leaves,  worms, 
stones,  rings,  and  dead  men's  hands  —  which 
are  for  the  most  part  competent  to  open  the 
way  into  cavernous  rocks,  and  which  all  agree 
in  pointing  out  hidden  wealth.  We  find,  more- 
over, that  many  of  these  charmed  objects  are 
carried  about  by  birds,  and  that  some  of  them 
possess,  in  addition  to  their  generic  properties, 
the  specific  power  of  benumbing  people's  senses. 
What,  now,  is  the  common  origin  of  this  whole 
group  of  superstitions  ?  And  since  mythology 
has  been  shown  to  be  the  result  of  primeval 
attempts  to  explain  the  phenomena  of  nature, 
what  natural  phenomenon  could  ever  have  given 
rise  to  so  many  seemingly  wanton  conceptions  ? 
Hopeless  as  the  problem  may  at  first  sight 
seem,  it  has  nevertheless  been  solved.  In  his 
great  treatise  on  "  The  Descent  of  Fire,"  Dr. 
Kuhn  has  shown  that  all  these  legends  and  tra- 
ditions are  descended  from  primitive  myths  ex- 
planatory of  the  lightning  and  the  storm-cloud.1 

To  us,  who  are  nourished  from  childhood  on 
the  truths  revealed  by  science,  the  sky  is  known 

1  Kuhn,  Die  Herabkunft  des  Fetters  und  des  Gottertranks. 
Berlin,  1859. 

63 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

to  be  merely  an  optical  appearance  due  to  the 
partial  absorption  of  the  solar  rays  in  pass- 
ing through  a  thick  stratum  of  atmospheric 
air ;  the  clouds  are  known  to  be  large  masses 
of  watery  vapour,  which  descend  in  raindrops 
when  sufficiently  condensed  ;  and  the  lightning 
is  known  to  be  a  flash  of  light  accompanying  an 
electric  discharge.  But  these  conceptions  are 
extremely  recondite,  and  have  been  attained 
only  through  centuries  of  philosophizing  and 
after  careful  observation  and  laborious  experi- 
ment. To  the  untaught  mind  of  a  child  or  of 
an  uncivilized  man,  it  seems  far  more  natural 
and  plausible  to  regard  the  sky  as  a  solid  dome 
of  blue  crystal,  the  clouds  as  snowy  mountains, 
or  perhaps  even  as  giants  or  angels,  the  light- 
ning as  a  flashing  dart  or  a  fiery  serpent.  In 
point  of  fact,  we  find  that  the  conceptions  ac- 
tually entertained  are  often  far  more  grotesque 
than  these.  I  can  recollect  once  framing  the 
hypothesis  that  the  flaming  clouds  of  sunset 
were  transient  apparitions,  vouchsafed  us  by 
way  of  warning,  of  that  burning  Calvinistic  hell 
with  which  my  childish  imagination  had  been 
unwisely  terrified;1  and  I  have  known  of  a 

1  "  Saga  me  forwhan  byth  seo  sunne  read  on  asfen  ?  Ic 
the  secge,  forthon  heo  locath  on  helle.  —  Tell  me,  why  is  the 
sun  red  at  even  ?  I  tell  thee,  because  she  looketh  on  hell." 
Thorpe,  Analecta  Anglo-Saxonica,  p.  1 1  $ ,  apud  Tylor, 
Primitive  Culture,  vol.  ii.  p.  63.  Barbaric  thought  had 
partly  anticipated  my  childish  theory. 
64 


THE  DESCENT  OF  FIRE 

four-year-old  boy  who  thought  that  the  snowy 
clouds  of  noonday  were  the  white  robes  of  the 
angels  hung  out  to  dry  in  the  sun.1  My  little 
daughter  is  anxious  to  know  whether  it  is  ne- 
cessary to  take  a  balloon  in  order  to  get  to  the 
place  where  God  lives,  or  whether  the  same  end 
can  be  accomplished  by  going  to  the  horizon 
and  crawling  up  the  sky ; 2  the  Mohammedan 
of  old  was  working  at  the  same  problem  when 
he  called  the  rainbow  the  bridge  Es-Sirat,  over 
which  souls  must  pass  on  their  way  to  heaven. 
According  to  the  ancient  Jew,  the  sky  was  a 
solid  plate,  hammered  out  by  the  gods,  and 
spread  over  the  earth  in  order  to  keep  up  the 
ocean  overhead ; 3  but  the  plate  was  full  of 
little  windows,  which  were  opened  whenever  it 
became  necessary  to  let  the  rain  come  through.4 

1  "  Still  in  North  Germany  does  the  peasant  say  of  thunder, 
that  the  angels  are  playing  skittles  aloft,  and  of  the  snow,  that 
they  are  shaking  up  the  feather-beds  in  heaven."      Baring- 
Gould,  Book  of  Werewolves,  p.  172. 

2  "  The  Polynesians  imagine  that  the  sky  descends  at  the 
horizon  and  incloses  the  earth.      Hence   they  call   foreigners 
papalangi,  or  *  heaven-bursters,'  as   having  broken  in   from 
another  world  outside."      Max  Miiller,  Chips,  ii.  268. 

8  •"  Way-yo'hmer  'helohim  yehi  raquianh  be-thok  ham- 
mayim  wihi  mavdil  beyn  mayim  la-mayim.  —  And  said  the 
gods,  Let  there  be  a  hammered  plate  in  the  midst  of  the  wa- 
ters, and  let  it  be  dividing  between  waters  and  waters." 
Genesis  i.  6. 

*  Genesis  vii.  1 1. 

65 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

With  equal  plausibility  the  Greek  represented 
the  rainy  sky  as  a  sieve  in  which  the  daughters 
of  Danaos  were  vainly  trying  to  draw  water ; 
while  to  the  Hindu  the  rain-clouds  were  celes- 
tial cattle  milked  by  the  wind-god.  In  primi- 
tive Aryan  lore,  the  sky  itself  was  a  blue  sea, 
and  the  clouds  were  ships  sailing  over  it ;  and 
an  English  legend  tells  how  one  of  these  ships 
once  caught  its  anchor  on  a  gravestone  in  the 
churchyard,  to  the  great  astonishment  of  the 
people  who  were  coming  out  of  church.  Cha- 
ron's ferry-boat  was  one  of  these  vessels,  and 
another  was  Odin's  golden  ship,  in  which  the 
souls  of  slain  heroes  were  conveyed  to  Valhalla. 
Hence  it  was  once  the  Scandinavian  practice 
to  bury  the  dead  in  boats ;  and  in  Altmark  a 
penny  is  still  placed  in  the  mouth  of  the  corpse, 
that  it  may  have  the  means  of  paying  its  fare  to 
the  ghostly  ferryman.1  In  such  a  vessel  drifted 
the  Lady  of  Shalott  on  her  fatal  voyage ;  and 
of  similar  nature  was  the  dusky  barge,  "  dark 
as  a  funeral  scarf  from  stem  to  stern,"  in  which 

1  See  Kelly,  Indo-European  Folk-Lore,  p.  120;  who 
states  also  that  in  Bengal  the  Garrows  burn  their  dead  in  a 
small  boat,  placed  on  top  of  the  funeral  pile. 

In  their  character  of  cows,  also,  the  clouds  were  regarded 
as  psychopomps  ;  and  hence  it  is  still  a  popular  superstition 
that  a  cow  breaking  into  the  yard  foretokens  a  death  in  the 
family. 


66 


THE  DESCENT  OF  FIRE 

Arthur    was    received   by    the    black-hooded 
queens.1 

But  the  fact  that  a  natural  phenomenon  was 
explained  in  one  way  did  not  hinder  it  from  be- 
ing explained  in  a  dozen  other  ways.  The  fact 
that  the  sun  was  generally  regarded  as  an  all- 
conquering  hero  did  not  prevent  its  being  called 
an  egg,  an  apple,  or  a  frog  squatting  on  the 
waters,  or  Ixion's  wheel,  or  the  eye  of  Poly- 
phemos,  or  the  stone  of  Sisyphos,  which  was  no 
sooner  pushed  up  to  the  zenith  than  it  rolled 
down  to  the  horizon.  So  the  sky  was  not  only 
a  crystal  dome  or  a  celestial  ocean,  but  it  was 
also  the  Aleian  land  through  which  Bellerophon 
wandered,  the  country  of  the  Lotos-eaters, 
or  again  the  realm  of  the  Graiai  beyond  the 
twilight ;  and  finally  it  was  personified  and  wor- 
shipped as  Dyaus  or  Varuna,  the  Vedic  proto- 
types of  the  Greek  Zeus  and  Ouranos.  The 
clouds,  too,  had  many  other  representatives 

1  The  sun-god  Freyr  had  a  cloud-ship  called  Skithblath- 
nir,  which  is  thus  described  in  Dasent's  Prose  Edda  :  "  She 
is  so  great  that  all  the  vEsir,  with  their  weapons  and  war- 
gear,  may  find  room  on  board  her  ; "  but  "  when  there  is 
no  need  of  faring  on  the  sea  in  her,  she  is  made  .  .  .  with 
so  much  craft  that  Freyr  may  fold  her  together  like  a  cloth, 
and  keep  her  in  his  bag."  This  same  virtue  was  possessed  by 
the  fairy  pavilion  which  the  Peri  Banou  gave  to  Ahmed  ;  the 
cloud  which  is  no  bigger  than  a  man's  hand  may  soon  over- 
spread the  whole  heaven,  and  shade  the  Sultan's  army  from 
the  solar  rays. 

6? 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

besides  ships  and  cows.  In  a  future  paper  it 
will  be  shown  that  they  were  sometimes  re- 
garded as  angels  or  houris ;  at  present  it  more 
nearly  concerns  us  to  know  that  they  appear, 
throughout  all  Aryan  mythology,  under  the 
form  of  birds.  It  used  to  be  a  matter  of  hope- 
less wonder  to  me  that  Aladdin's  innocent  re- 
quest for  a  roc's  egg  to  hang  in  the  dome  of 
his  palace  should  have  been  regarded  as  a  crime 
worthy  of  punishment  by  the  loss  of  the  won- 
derful lamp  ;  the  obscurest  part  of  the  whole 
affair  being  perhaps  the  Jinni's  passionate  allu- 
sion to  the  egg  as  his  master  :  "  Wretch  !  dost 
thou  command  me  to  bring  thee  my  master, 
and  hang  him  up  in  the  midst  of  this  vaulted 
dome  ? "  But  the  incident  is  to  some  extent 
cleared  of  its  mystery  when  we  learn  that  the 
roc's  egg  is  the  bright  sun,  and  that  the  roc 
itself  is  the  rushing  storm-cloud  which,  in  the 
tale  of  Sindbad,  haunts  the  sparkling  starry  fir- 
mament, symbolized  as  a  valley  of  diamonds.1 
According  to  one  Arabic  authority,  the  length 

1  Euhemerism  has  done  its  best  with  this  bird,  represent- 
ing it  as  an  immense  vulture  or  condor  or  as  a  reminiscence 
of  the  extinct  dodo.  But  a  Chinese  myth,  cited  by  Klaproth, 
well  preserves  its  true  character  when  it  describes  it  as  "  a 
bird  which  in  flying  obscures  the  sun,  and  of  whose  quills  are 
made  water-tuns."  See  Nouveau  Journal  Asiatique,  torn, 
xii.  p.  235.  The  big  bird  in  the  Norse  tale  of  the  "  Blue 
Belt ' '  belongs  to  the  same  species. 

68 


THE  DESCENT  OF  FIRE 

of  its  wings  is  ten  thousand  fathoms.  But  in 
European  tradition  it  dwindles  from  these  huge 
dimensions  to  the  size  of  an  eagle,  a  raven,  or 
a  woodpecker.  Among  the  birds  enumerated 
by  Kuhn  and  others  as  representing  the  storm- 
cloud  are  likewise  the  wren,  or  "  kinglet " 
(French  roitelet] ;  the  owl,  sacred  to  Athene ; 
the  cuckoo,  stork,  and  sparrow ;  and  the  red- 
breasted  robin,  whose  name  Robert  was  origi- 
nally an  epithet  of  the  lightning-god  Thor.  In 
certain  parts  of  France  it  is  still  believed  that 
the  robbing  of  a  wren's  nest  will  render  the  cul- 
prit liable  to  be  struck  by  lightning.  The  same 
belief  was  formerly  entertained  in  Teutonic 
countries  with  respect  to  the  robin ;  and  I  sup- 
pose that  from  this  superstition  is  descended 
the  prevalent  notion,  which  I  often  encountered 
in  childhood,  that  there  is  something  peculiarly 
wicked  in  killing  robins. 

Now,  as  the  raven  or  woodpecker,  in  the 
various  myths  of  schamir,  is  the  dark  storm- 
cloud,  so  the  rock-splitting  worm  or  plant  or 
pebble  which  the  bird  carries  in  its  beak  and 
lets  fall  to  the  ground  is  nothing  more  or  less 
thun  the  flash  of  lightning  carried  and  dropped 
by  the  cloud.  "  If  the  cloud  was  supposed  to 
be  a  great  bird,  the  lightnings  were  regarded  as 
vt  rithing  worms  or  serpents  in  its  beak.  These 
fiery  serpents,  eXi/acu  y/oa/i/xoetSoj?  (£e/>o- 
i,  are  believed  in  to  this  day  by  the  Cana- 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

dian  Indians,  who  call  the  thunder  their  hiss- 
ing." * 

But  these  are  not  the  only  mythical  concep- 
tions which  are  to  be  found  wrapped  up  in 
the  various  myths  of  schamir  and  the  divining 
rod.  The  persons  who  told  these  stories  were 
not  weaving  ingenious  allegories  about  thunder- 
storms ;  they  were  telling  stories,  or  giving 
utterance  to  superstitions,  of  which  the  original 
meaning  was  forgotten.  The  old  grannies  who, 
along  with  a  stoical  indifference  to  the  fate  of 
quails  and  partridges,  used  to  impress  upon  me 
the  wickedness  of  killing  robins,  did  not  add 
that  I  should  be  struck  by  lightning  if  I  failed 
to  heed  their  admonitions.  They  had  never 
heard  that  the  robin  was  the  bird  of  Thor ;  they 
merely  rehearsed  the  remnant  of  the  supersti- 
tion which  had  survived  to  their  own  times, 
while  the  essential  part  of  it  had  long  since  faded 
from  recollection.  The  reason  for  regarding  a 
robin's  life  as  more  sacred  than  a  partridge's  had 
been  forgotten ;  but  it  left  behind,  as  was  natu- 
ral, a  vague  recognition  of  that  mythical  sanc- 
tity. The  primitive  meaning  of  a  myth  fades 
away  as  inevitably  as  the  primitive  meaning  of 
a  word  or  phrase ;  and  the  rabbins  who  told  of 
a  worm  which  shatters  rocks  no  more  thought 
of  the  writhing  thunderbolts  than  the  modern 

1  Baring-Gould,  Curious  Myths,  vol.  ii.   p.  146.      Com- 
pare Tylor,  Primitive  Culture,  vol.  ii.  p.  237,  seq. 
70 


THE  DESCENT  OF  FIRE 

reader  thinks  of  oyster  shells  when  he  sees  the 
word  ostracism,  or  consciously  breathes  a  prayer 
as  he  writes  the  phrase  good-by.  It  is  only  in 
its  callow  infancy  that  the  full  force  of  a  myth 
is  felt,  and  its  period  of  luxuriant  development 
dates  from  the  time  when  its  physical  signifi- 
cance is  lost  or  obscured.  It  was  because  the 
Greek  had  forgotten  that  Zeus  meant  the  bright 
sky,  that  he  could  make  him  king  over  an 
anthropomorphic  Olympos.  The  Hindu  Dy- 
aus,  who  carried  his  significance  in  his  name  as 
plainly  as  the  Greek  Helios,  never  attained 
such  an  exalted  position ;  he  yielded  to  deities 
of  less  obvious  pedigree,  such  as  Brahma  and 
Vishnu. 

Since,  therefore,  the  myth-tellers  recounted 
merely  the  wonderful  stories  which  their  own 
nurses  and  grandmas  had  told  them,  and  had 
no  intention  of  weaving  subtle  allegories  or 
wrapping  up  a  physical  truth  in  mystic  em- 
blems, it  follows  that  they  were  not  bound  to 
avoid  incongruities  or  to  preserve  a  philosophi- 
cal symmetry  in  their  narratives.  In  the  great 
majority  of  complex  myths,  no  such  symmetry 
is  to  be  found.  A  score  of  different  mythical 
conceptions  would  get  wrought  into  the  same 
story,  and  the  attempt  to  pull  them  apart  and 
construct  a  single  harmonious  system  of  con- 
ceptions out  of  the  pieces  must  often  end  in 
ingenious  absurdity.  If  Odysseus  is  unques- 
71 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

tionably  the  sun,  so  is  the  eye  of  Polyphemos, 
which  Odysseus  puts  out.1  But  the  Greek  poet 
knew  nothing  of  the  incongruity,  for  he  was 
thinking  only  of  a  superhuman  hero  freeing 
himself  from  a  giant  cannibal ;  he  knew  no- 
thing of  Sanskrit,  or  of  comparative  mythology, 
and  the  sources  of  his  myths  were  as  com- 
pletely hidden  from  his  view  as  the  sources  of 
the  Nile. 

We  need  not  be  surprised,  then,  to  find  that 
in  one  version  of  the  schamir  myth  the  cloud 
is  the  bird  which  carries  the  worm,  while  in 
another  version  the  cloud  is  the  rock  or  moun- 
tain which  the  talisman  cleaves  open ;  nor  need 
we  wonder  at  it,  if  we  find  stories  in  which  the 
two  conceptions  are  mingled  together  without 
regard  to  an  incongruity  which  in  the  mind  of 
the  myth-teller  no  longer  exists.2 

1  « 'If  Polyphemos' s  eye  be  the  sun,  then  Odysseus,  the 
solar  hero,  extinguishes  himself,  a  very  primitive  instance  of 
suicide."    Mahaffy,  Prolegomena,  p.  57.    See,  also,  Brown, 
Poseidon,  pp.  39,  40.    This  objection  would  be  relevant  only 
in  case  Homer  were  supposed  to  be  constructing  an  allegory 
with   entire  knowledge  of  its  meaning.    It  has   no  validity 
whatever  when  we  recollect  that  Homer  could  have  known 
nothing  of  the  incongruity. 

2  The  Sanskrit  myth-teller  indeed  mixes  up  his  materials 
in  a  way  which  seems  ludicrous  to  a  Western  reader.     He 
describes  Indra  (the  sun-god)  as  not  only  cleaving  the  cloud- 
mountains  with  his  sword,  but  also  cutting  off  their  wings 
and  hurling  them  from  the  sky.     See  Burnouf,  Bhagavatd 
Pur  ana,  vi.  12,  26. 

72 


THE  DESCENT  OF  FIRE 

In  early  Aryan  mythology  there  is  nothing 
by  which  the  clouds  are  more  frequently  repre- 
sented than  by  rocks  or  mountains.  Such  were 
the  Symplegades,  which,  charmed  by  the  harp 
of  the  wind-god  Orpheus,  parted  to  make  way 
for  the  talking  ship  Argo,  with  its  crew  of  solar 
heroes.1  Such,  too,  were  the  mountains  Ossa 
and  Pelion,  which  the  giants  piled  up  one  upon 
another  in  their  impious  assault  upon  Zeus,  the 
lord  of  the  bright  sky.  As  Mr.  Baring-Gould 
observes:  "The  ancient  Aryan  had  the  same 
name  for  cloud  and  mountain.  To  him  the 
piles  of  vapour  on  the  horizon  were  so  like 
Alpine  ranges  that  he  had  but  one  word  whereby 
to  designate  both.2  These  great  mountains  of 
heaven  were  opened  by  the  lightning.  In  the 
sudden  flash  he  beheld  the  dazzling  splendour 
within,  but  only  for  a  moment,  and  then,  with 

1  Mr.  Tylor  offers  a  different,  and  possibly  a  better,  ex- 
planation of  the  Symplegades  as  the  gates  of  Night  through 
which  the  solar  ship,  having  passed  successfully  once,  may 
henceforth  pass  forever.    See  the  details  of  the  evidence  in  his 
Primitive  Culture,  i.  315. 

2  The  Sanskrit  parvata,  a  bulging  or  inflated  body,  means 
both  "cloud"  and  "mountain."    "  In  the  Edda,  too,  the 
rocks,  said  to  have  been  fashioned  out  of  Ymir's  bones,  are 
supposed  to  be  intended  for  clouds.    In  Old  Norse  Klakkr 
means  both  cloud  and  rock  ;  nay,  the  English  word  cloud 
itself  has  been  identified  with  the  Anglo-Saxon  clud,   rock. 
See  Justi,  Orient  und  Occident,  vol.  ii.  p.  62."    Max  Miiller, 
Rig- Veda,  vol.  i.  p.  44. 

73 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

a  crash,  the  celestial  rocks  closed  again.  Believ- 
ing these  vaporous  piles  to  contain  resplendent 
treasures  of  which  partial  glimpse  was  obtained 
by  mortals  in  a  momentary  gleam,  tales  were 
speedily  formed,  relating  the  adventures  of  some 
who  had  succeeded  in  entering  these  treasure 
mountains." 

This  sudden  flash  is  the  smiting  of  the  cloud- 
rock  by  the  arrow  of  Ahmed,  the  resistless  ham- 
mer of  Thor,  the  spear  of  Odin,  the  trident  of 
Poseidon,  or  the  rod  of  Hermes.  The  forked 
streak  of  light  is  the  archetype  of  the  divining 
rod  in  its  oldest  form,  —  that  in  which  it  not 
only  indicates  the  hidden  treasures,  but,  like  the 
staff  of  the  Ilsenstein  shepherd,  bursts  open  the 
enchanted  crypt  and  reveals  them  to  the  aston- 
ished wayfarer.  Hence  the  one  thing  essential 
to  the  divining  rod,  from  whatever  tree  it  be 
chosen,  is  that  it  shall  be  forked. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  comprehend  the  reasons 
which  led  the  ancients  to  speak  of  the  light- 
ning as  a  worm,  serpent,  trident,  arrow,  or  forked 
wand  ;  but  when  we  inquire  why  it  was  some- 
times symbolized  as  a  flower  or  leaf,  or  when 
we  seek  to  ascertain  why  certain  trees,  such  as 
the  ash,  hazel,  white-thorn,  and  mistletoe,  were 
supposed  to  be  in  a  certain  sense  embodiments 
of  it,  we  are  entering  upon  a  subject  too  com- 
plicated to  be  satisfactorily  treated  within  the 
limits  of  the  present  paper.  It  has  been  said 
74 


THE  DESCENT  OF  FIRE 

that  the  point  of  resemblance  between  a  cow 
and  a  comet,  that  both  have  tails,  was  quite 
enough  for  the  primitive  word-maker :  it  was 
certainly  enough  for  the  primitive  myth-teller.1 
Sometimes  the  pinnate  shape  of  a  leaf,  the  fork- 
ing of  a  branch,  the  tri-cleft  corolla,  or  even  the 
red  colour  of  a  flower,  seems  to  have  been  suffi- 
cient to  determine  the  association  of  ideas.  The 
Hindu  commentators  of  the  Veda  certainly  lay 
great  stress  on  the  fact  that  the  palasa,  one 
of  their  lightning-trees,  is  trident-leaved.  The 
mistletoe  branch  is  forked,  like  a  wish-bone,2 
and  so  is  the  stem  which  bears  the  forget-me- 
not  or  wild  scorpion  grass.  So,  too,  the  leaves 
of  the  Hindu  ficus  religiosa  resemble  long  spear- 
heads.3 But  in  many  cases  it  is  impossible  for 

1  In  accordance  with  the  mediaeval   "  doctrine  of  signa- 
tures," it  was  maintained  "  that  the  hard,  stony  seeds  of  the 
Gromwell  must  be  good  for  gravel,  and  the   knotty  tubers 
of  scrophularia  for  scrofulous  glands  ;  while  the  scaly  pappus 
of  scaliosa  showed  it  to  be  a  specific  in  leprous  diseases,  the 
spotted  leaves  of  pulmonaria  that  it  was  a  sovereign  remedy 
for  tuberculous  lungs,  and  the  growth  of  saxifrage  in  the  fis- 
sures of  rocks  that  it  would  disintegrate  stone  in  the  bladder." 
Prior,   Popular  Names    of  British  Plants,  introd.,  p.  xiv. 
See,  also,  Chapiel,  La  Doctrine  des  Signatures.    Paris,  1866. 

2  Indeed,  the  wish-bone,  or  forked  clavicle  of  a  fowl,  it- 
self belongs  to  the   same  family  of  talismans  as  the  divining 
tod. 

8  The  ash,  on  the  other  hand,  has  been  from  time  im- 
memorial used  for  spears  in  many  parts  of  the  Aryan  domain. 
The  word  essc  meant,  in  Anglo-Saxon,  indifferently  "  ash" 

75 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

us  to  determine  with  confidence  the  reasons 
which  may  have  guided  primitive  men  in  their 
choice  of  talismanic  plants.  In  the  case  of  some 
of  these  stories,  it  would  no  doubt  be  wasting 
ingenuity  to  attempt  to  assign  a  mythical  origin 
for  each  point  of  detail.  The  ointment  of  the 
dervise,  for  instance,  in  the  Arabian  tale,  has 
probably  no  special  mythical  significance,  but 
was  rather  suggested  by  the  exigencies  of  the 
story,  in  an  age  when  the  old  mythologies  were 
so  far  disintegrated  and  mingled  together  that 
any  one  talisman  would  serve  as  well  as  another 
the  purposes  of  the  narrator.  But  the  lightning 
plants  of  Indo-European  folk-lore  cannot  be 
thus  summarily  disposed  of;  for  however  diffi- 
cult it  may  be  for  us  to  perceive  any  connection 
between  them  and  the  celestial  phenomena  which 
they  represent,  the  myths  concerning  them  are 
so  numerous  and  explicit  as  to  render  it  certain 
that  some  such  connection  was  imagined  by  the 
myth-makers.  The  superstition  concerning  the 
hand  of  glory  is  not  so  hard  to  interpret.  In 
the  mythology  of  the  Finns,  the  storm-cloud  is 
a  black  man  with  a  bright  copper  hand  ;  and  in 
Hindustan,  Indra  Savitar,  the  deity  who  slays 

tree  "  or  "  spear  ;  "  and  the  same  is,  or  has  been,  true  of 
the  French  fresne  and  the  Greek  /leXt'a.  The  root  of  eesc 
appears  in  the  Sanskrit  as,  "to  throw  "  or  "  lance,"  whence 
asa,  "  a  bow,"  and  asana,  "  an  arrow."  See  Pictet,  Ori- 
gines  Indo-Europeennes,  i.  222. 

76 


THE  DESCENT  OF  FIRE 

the  demon  of  the  cloud,  is  golden-handed.  The 
selection  of  the  hand  of  a  man  who  has  been 
hanged  is  probably  due  to  the  superstition  which 
regarded  the  storm-god  Odin  as  peculiarly  the 
lord  of  the  gallows.  The  man  who  is  raised  upon 
the  gallows  is  placed  directly  in  the  track  of 
the  wild  huntsman,  who  comes  with  his  hounds 
to  carry  off  the  victim  ;  and  hence  the  notion, 
which,  according  to  Mr.  Kelly,  is  "very  com- 
mon in  Germany  and  not  extinct  in  England," 
that  every  suicide  by  hanging  is  followed  by  a 
storm. 

The  paths  of  comparative  mythology  are 
devious,  but  we  have  now  pursued  them  long 
enough,  I  believe,  to  have  arrived  at  a  tolerably 
clear  understanding  of  the  original  nature  of  the 
divining  rod.  Its  power  of  revealing  treasures 
has  been  sufficiently  explained  ;  and  its  affinity 
for  water  results  so  obviously  from  the  character 
of  the  lightning  myth  as  to  need  no  further 
comment.  But  its  power  of  detecting  criminals 
still  remains  to  be  accounted  for. 

In  Greek  mythology,  the  being  which  detects 
and  punishes  crime  is  the  Erinys,  the  prototype 
of  the  Latin  Fury,  figured  by  late  writers  as  a 
horrible  monster  with  serpent  locks.  But  this 
is  a  degradation  of  the  original  conception.  The 
name  Erinys  did  not  originally  mean  Fury,  and 
it  cannot  be  explained  from  Greek  sources  alone. 
It  appears  in  Sanskrit  as  Saranyu,  a  word  which 
77 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

signifies  the  light  of  morning  creeping  over  the 
sky.  And  thus  we  are  led  to  the  startling 
conclusion  that,  as  the  light  of  morning  re- 
veals the  evil  deeds  done  under  the  cover  of 
night,  so  the  lovely  Dawn,  or  Erinys,  came  to 
be  regarded  under  one  aspect  as  the  terrible 
detector  and  avenger  of  iniquity.  Yet  startling 
as  the  conclusion  is,  it  is  based  on  established 
laws  of  phonetic  change,  and  cannot  be  gain- 
said. 

But  what  has  the  avenging  daybreak  to  do 
with  the  lightning  and  the  divining  rod  ?  To 
the  modern  mind  the  association  is  not  an 
obvious  one :  in  antiquity  it  was  otherwise. 
Myths  of  the  daybreak  and  myths  of  the  light- 
ning often  resemble  each  other  so  closely  that, 
except  by  a  delicate  philological  analysis,  it  is 
difficult  to  distinguish  the  one  from  the  other. 
The  reason  is  obvious.  In  each  case  the  phe- 
nomenon to  be  explained  is  the  struggle  be- 
tween the  day-god  and  one  of  the  demons  of 
darkness.  There  is  essentially  no  distinction  to 
the  mind  of  the  primitive  man  between  the 
Panis,  who  steal  Indra's  bright  cows  and  keep 
them  in  a  dark  cavern  all  night,  and  the  throt- 
tling snake  Ahi,  or  Echidna,  who  imprisons  the 
waters  in  the  stronghold  of  the  thunder-cloud 
and  covers  the  earth  with  a  short-lived  dark- 
ness. And  so  the  poisoned  arrows  of  Bellero- 
phon,  which  slay  the  storm  dragon,  differ  in  no 

78 


THE  DESCENT  OF  FIRE 

essential  respect  from  the  shafts  with  which 
Odysseus  slaughters  the  night  demons  who 
have  for  ten  long  hours  beset  his  mansion. 
Thus  the  divining  rod,  representing  as  it  does 
the  weapon  of  the  god  of  day,  comes  legiti- 
mately enough  by  its  function  of  detecting  and 
avenging  crime. 

But  the  lightning  not  only  reveals  strange 
treasures  and  gives  water  to  the  thirsty  land 
and  makes  plain  what  is  doing  under  cover  of 
darkness ;  it  also  sometimes  kills,  benumbs,  or 
paralyzes.  Thus  the  head  of  the  Gorgon  Me- 
dusa turns  into  stone  those  who  look  upon  it. 
Thus  the  ointment  of  the  dervise,  in  the  tale 
of  Baba  Abdallah,  not  only  reveals  all  the  trea- 
sures of  the  earth,  but  instantly  thereafter  blinds 
the  unhappy  man  who  tests  its  powers.  And 
thus  the  hand  of  glory,  which  bursts  open  bars 
and  bolts,  benumbs  also  those  who  happen  to 
be  near  it.  Indeed,  few  of  the  favoured  mortals 
who  were  allowed  to  visit  the  caverns  opened 
by  sesame,  or  the  luck-flower,  escaped  without 
disaster.  The  monkish  tale  of  "  The  Clerk  and 
the  Image,"  in  which  the  primeval  mythical 
features  are  curiously  distorted,  well  illustrates 
this  point. 

In  the  city  of  Rome  there  formerly  stood 

an  image,  with  its  right  hand  extended,  and  on 

its  forefinger  the  words  "  Strike  here."     Many 

wise  men  puzzled  in  vain  over  the  meaning  of 

79 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

the  inscription ;  but  at  last  a  certain  priest  ob- 
served that  whenever  the  sun  shone  on  the  fig- 
ure, the  shadow  of  the  finger  was  discernible  on 
the  ground  at  a  little  distance  from  the  statue. 
Having  marked  the  spot,  he  waited  until  mid- 
night, and  then  began  to  dig.  At  last  his  spade 
struck  upon  something  hard.  It  was  a  trap- 
door, below  which  a  flight  of  marble  steps  de- 
scended into  a  spacious  hall,  where  many  men 
were  sitting  in  solemn  silence  amid  piles  of  gold 
and  diamonds  and  long  rows  of  enamelled 
vases.  Beyond  this  he  found  another  room,  a 
gyn<ecium  filled  with  beautiful  women  reclining 
on  richly  embroidered  sofas  ;  yet  here,  too,  all 
was  profound  silence.  A  superb  banqueting- 
hall  next  met  his  astonished  gaze  ;  then  a  silent 
kitchen ;  then  granaries  loaded  with  forage ; 
then  a  stable  crowded  with  motionless  horses. 
The  whole  place  was  brilliantly  lighted  by  a 
carbuncle  which  was  suspended  in  one  corner 
of  the  reception  room ;  and  opposite  stood  an 
archer,  with  his  bow  and  arrow  raised,  in  the  act 
of  taking  aim  at  the  jewel.  As  the  priest  passed 
back  through  this  hall,  he  saw  a  diamond-hiked 
knife  lying  on  a  marble  table ;  and  wishing  to 
carry  away  something  wherewith  to  accredit  his 
story,  he  reached  out  his  hand  to  take  it ;  but 
no  sooner  had  he  touched  it  than  all  was  dark. 
The  archer  had  shot  with  his  arrow,,  the  bright 
jewel  was  shivered  into  a  thousand  pieces,  the 
80 


THE  DESCENT  OF  FIRE 

staircase  had  fled,  and  the  priest  found  himself 
buried  alive.1 

Usually,  however,  though  the  lightning  is 
wont  to  strike  dead,  with  its  basilisk  glance, 
those  who  rashly  enter  its  mysterious  caverns, 
it  is  regarded  rather  as  a  benefactor  than  as  a 
destroyer.  The  feelings  with  which  the  myth- 
making  age  contemplated  the  thunder-shower 
as  it  revived  the  earth  paralyzed  by  a  long 
drought  are  shown  in  the  myth  of  Oidipous. 
The  Sphinx,  whose  name  signifies  "  the  one 
who  binds,"  is  the  demon  who  sits  on  the  cloud- 
rock  and  imprisons  the  rain,  muttering  dark 
sayings  which  none  but  the  all-knowing  sun 
may  understand.  The  flash  of  solar  light,  which 
causes  the  monster  to  fling  herself  down  from 
the  cliff  with  a  fearful  roar,  restores  the  land 
to  prosperity.  But  besides  this,  the  association 
of  the  thunderstorm  with  the  approach  of  sum- 
mer has  produced  many  myths  in  which  the 
lightning  is  symbolized  as  the  life-renewing 
wand  of  the  victorious  sun-god.  Hence  the 
use  of  the  divining  rod  in  the  cure  of  disease ; 
and  hence  the  large  family  of  schamir  myths  in 

1  Compare  Spenser's  story  of  Sir  Guyon,  in  the  Faery 
Queen,  where,  however,  the  knight  fares  better  than  this  poor 
priest.  Usually  these  lightning  caverns  were  like  Ixion's 
treasure-house,  into  which  none  might  look  and  live.  This 
conception  is  the  foundation  of  part  of  the  story  of  Blue-Beard 
and  of  the  Arabian  tale  of  the  third  one-eyed  Calender. 

81 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

which  the  dead  are  restored  to  life  by  leaves  or 
herbs.  In  Grimm's  tale  of  the  Three  Snake 
Leaves,  "  a  prince  is  buried  alive  (like  Sindbad) 
with  his  dead  wife,  and  seeing  a  snake  approach- 
ing her  body,  he  cuts  it  in  three  pieces.  Pre- 
sently another  snake,  crawling  from  the  corner, 
saw  the  other  lying  dead,  and  going  away  soon 
returned  with  three  green  leaves  in  its  mouth  ; 
then  laying  the  parts  of  the  body  together  so 
as  to  join,  it  put  one  leaf  on  each  wound,  and 
the  dead  snake  was  alive  again.  The  prince, 
applying  the  leaves  to  his  wife's  body,  restores 
her  also  to  life."  l  In  the  Greek  story,  told  by 
JEli&n  and  Apollodoros,  Polyidos  is  shut  up  with 
the  corpse  of  Glaukos,  which  he  is  ordered  to 
restore  to  life.  He  kills  a  dragon  which  is  ap- 
proaching the  body,  but  is  presently  astonished 
at  seeing  another  dragon  come  with  a  blade  of 
grass  and  place  it  upon  its  dead  companion, 
which  instantly  rises  from  the  ground.  Polyi- 
dos takes  the  same  blade  of  grass,  and  with  it 
resuscitates  Glaukos.  The  same  incident  occurs 
in  the  Hindu  story  of  Panch  Phul  Ranee,  and 
in  Fouque's  "  Sir  Elidoc,"  which  is  founded 
on  a  Breton  legend. 

We  need  not  wonder,  then,  at  the  extraordi- 
nary therapeutic  properties  which  are  in  all  Ar- 
yan folk-lore  ascribed  to  the  various  lightning- 

1  Cox,  Mythology  of  the  Aryan  Nations,  vol.  i.  p.  161. 

82 


THE  DESCENT  OF  FIRE 

plants.  In  Sweden  sanitary  amulets  are  made 
of  mistletoe  twigs,  and  the  plant  is  supposed  to 
be  a  specific  against  epilepsy  and  an  antidote 
for  poisons.  In  Cornwall  children  are  passed 
through  holes  in  ash-trees  in  order  to  cure  them 
of  hernia.  Ash  rods  are  used  in  some  parts  of 
England  for  the  cure  of  diseased  sheep,  cows, 
and  horses  ;  and  in  particular  they  are  supposed 
to  neutralize  the  venom  of  serpents.  The  no- 
tion that  snakes  are  afraid  of  an  ash-tree  is  not 
extinct  even  in  the  United  States.  The  other 
day  I  was  told,  not  by  an  old  granny,  but  by  a 
man  fairly  educated  and  endowed  with  a  very 
unusual  amount  of  good  common  sense,  that 
a  rattlesnake  will  sooner  go  through  fire  than 
creep  over  ash  leaves  or  into  the  shadow  of  an 
ash-tree.  Exactly  the  same  statement  is  made 
by  Pliny,  who  adds  that  if  you  draw  a  circle 
with  an  ash  rod  around  the  spot  of  ground  on 
which  a  snake  is  lying,  the  animal  must  die 
of  starvation,  being  as  effectually  imprisoned  as 
Ugolino  in  the  dungeon  at  Pisa.  In  Corn- 
wall it  is  believed  that  a  blow  from  an  ash 
stick  will  instantly  kill  any  serpent.  The  ash 
shares  this  virtue  with  the  hazel  and  fern.  A 
Swedish  peasant  will  tell  you  that  snakes  may 
be  deprived  of  their  venom  by  a  touch  with  a 
hazel  wand ;  and  when  an  ancient  Greek  had 
occasion  to  make  his  bed  in  the  woods,  he  se- 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

lected  fern  leaves  if  possible,  in  the  belief  that 
the  smell  of  them  would  drive  away  poisonous 
animals.1 

But  the  beneficent  character  of  the  light- 
ning appears  still  more  clearly  in  another  class 
of  myths.  To  the  primitive  man  the  shaft  of 
light  coming  down  from  heaven  was  typical  of 
the  original  descent  of  fire  for  the  benefit  and 
improvement  of  the  human  race.  The  Sioux 
Indians  account  for  the  origin  of  fire  by  a  myth 
of  unmistakable  kinship ;  they  say  that  "  their 
first  ancestor  obtained  his  fire  from  the  sparks 
which  a  friendly  panther  struck  from  the  rocks 
as  he  scampered  up  a  stony  hill."  2  This  pan- 
ther is  obviously  the  counterpart  of  the  Aryan 
bird  which  drops  schamir.  But  the  Aryan  im- 
agination hit  upon  a  far  more  remarkable  con- 
ception. The  ancient  Hindus  obtained  fire  by 
a  process  similar  to  that  employed  by  Count 
Rumford  in  his  experiments  on  the  generation 
of  heat  by  friction.  They  first  wound  a  couple 
of  cords  around  a  pointed  stick  in  such  a  way 
that  the  unwinding  of  the  one  would  wind  up 
the  other,  and  then,  placing  the  point  of  the 
stick  against  a  circular  disk  of  wood,  twirled  it 
rapidly  by  alternate  pulls  on  the  two  strings. 
This  instrument  is  called  a  chark,  and  is  still 

i  Kelly,  Indo-European  Folk-lore,  pp.    147,  183,  1 86, 

193- 
3  Brinton,  Myths  of  the  New  World,  p.  151. 

84 


THE  DESCENT  OF  FIRE 

used  in  South  Africa,1  in  Australia,  in  Sumatra, 
and  among  the  Veddahs  of  Ceylon.  The  Rus- 
sians found  it  in  Kamtchatka ;  and  it  was  for- 
merly employed  in  America,  from  Labrador  to 
the  Straits  of  Magellan.2  The  Hindus  churned 
milk  by  a  similar  process  ; 3  and  in  order  to  ex- 
plain the  thunderstorm,  a  Sanskrit  poem  tells 
how  "  once  upon  a  time  the  Devas,  or  gods, 
and  their  opponents,  the  Asuras,  made  a  truce, 
and  joined  together  in  churning  the  ocean  to 
procure  amrita,  the  drink  of  immortality.  They 
took  Mount  Mandara  for  a  churning  stick,  and, 
wrapping  the  great  serpent  Sesha  round  it  for 
a  rope,  they  made  the  mountain  spin  round  to 

1  Callaway,  Zulu  Nursery  Tales,  i.  173,  note  12. 

2  Tylor,  Early  History  of  Mankind,  p.  238  ;  Primitive 
Culture,  vol.  ii.   p.  254  ;  Darwin,  Naturalist's  Voyage,  p. 
409. 

"Jacky's  next  proceeding  was  to  get  some  dry  sticks  and 
wood,  and  prepare  a  fire,  which,  to  George's  astonishment, 
he  lighted  thus.  He  got  a  block  of  wood,  in  the  middle  of 
which  he  made  a  hole  ;  then  he  cut  and  pointed  a  long  stick, 
and  inserting  the  point  into  the  block,  worked  it  round  be- 
tween his  palms  for  some  time  and  with  increasing  rapidity. 
Presently  there  came  a  smell  of  burning  wood,  and  soon  after 
it  burst  into  a  flame  at  the  point  of  contact.  Jacky  cut  slices 
of  shark  and  roasted  them."  Reade,  Never  too  Late  to 
Mend,  chap,  xxxviii. 

8  The  production  of  fire  by  the  drill  is  often  called  churn- 
ing, e.  g.,  "  He  took  the  uvati  [chark],  and  sat  down  and 
churned  it,  and  kindled  a  fire."  Callaway,  Zulu  Nursery 
Tales,  i.  1 74. 

85 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

and  fro,  the  Devas  pulling  at  the  serpent's  tail, 
and  the  Asuras  at  its  head."  l  In  this  myth 
the  churning  stick,  with  its  flying  serpent-cords, 
is  the  lightning,  and  the  amrita,  or  drink  of 
immortality,  is  simply  the  rain-water,  which  in 
Aryan  folk-lore  possesses  the  same  healing  vir- 
tues as  the  lightning.  "  In  Sclavonic  myths  it  is 
the  water  of  life  which  restores  the  dead  earth, 
a  water  brought  by  a  bird  from  the  depths  of 
a  gloomy  cave."  2  It  is  the  celestial  soma  or 
mead  which  Indra  loves  to  drink;  it  is  the 
ambrosial  nectar  of  the  Olympian  gods  ;  it  is 
the  charmed  water  which  in  the  Arabian  Nights 
restores  to  human  shape  the  victims  of  wicked 
sorcerers ;  and  it  is  the  elixir  of  life  which  me- 
diaeval philosophers  tried  to  discover,  and  in 
quest  of  which  Ponce  de  Leon  traversed  the 
wilds  of  Florida.3 

The  most  interesting  point  in  this  Hindu 
myth  is  the  name  of  the  peaked  mountain 
Mandara,  or  Manthara,  which  the  gods  and 
devils  took  for  their  churning  stick.  The  word 
means  "  a  churning  stick,"  and  it  appears  also, 
with  a  prefixed  preposition,  in  the  name  of  the 

1  Kelly,    Indo-European    Folk-Lore ,    p.    39.     Burnouf, 
Bhagavata  Pur  ana,  viii.  6,  32. 

2  Baring-Gould,  Curious  Myths,  p.  149. 

8  It  is  also  the  regenerating  water  of  baptism,  and  the 
'«  holy  water  "  of  the  Roman  Catholic. 


86 


THE  DESCENT  OF  FIRE 

fire  drill,  pramantha.  Now  Kuhn  has  proved 
that  this  name,  pramantha,  is  etymologically 
identical  with  Prometheus,  the  name  of  the  bene- 
ficent Titan,  who  stole  fire  from  heaven  and  be- 
stowed it  upon  mankind  as  the  richest  of  boons. 
This  sublime  personage  was  originally  nothing 
but  the  celestial  drill  which  churns  fire  out  of 
the  clouds ;  but  the  Greeks  had  so  entirely  for- 
gotten his  origin  that  they  interpreted  his  name 
as  meaning  "  the  one  who  thinks  beforehand," 
and  accredited  him  with  a  brother,  Epimetheus, 
or  "  the  one  who  thinks  too  late."  The  Greeks 
had  adopted  another  name,  trypanon,  for  their 
fire  drill,  and  thus  the  primitive  character  of 
Prometheus  became  obscured. 

I  have  said  above  that  it  was  regarded  as  ab- 
solutely essential  that  the  divining  rod  should 
be  forked.  To  this  rule,  however,  there  was 
one  exception,  and  if  any  further  evidence  be 
needed  to  convince  the  most  sceptical  that  the 
divining  rod  is  nothing  but  a  symbol  of  the 
lightning,  that  exception  will  furnish  such  evi- 
dence. For  this  exceptional  kind  of  divining 
rod  was  made  of  a  pointed  stick  rotating  in  a 
block  of  wood,  and  it  was  the  presence  of  hid- 
den water  or  treasure  which  was  supposed  to 
excite  the  rotatory  motion. 

In  the  myths  relating  to  Prometheus,  the 
lightning-god  appears  as  the  originator  of  civili- 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

zation,  sometimes  as  the  creator  of  the  human 
race,  and  always  as  its  friend,1  suffering  in  its 
behalf  the  most  fearful  tortures  at  the  hands  of 
the  jealous  Zeus.  In  one  story  he  creates  man 
by  making  a  clay  image  and  infusing  into  it  a 
spark  of  the  fire  which  he  had  brought  from 
heaven ;  in  another  story  he  is  himself  the  first 
man.  In  the  Peloponnesian  myth  Phoroneus, 
who  is  Prometheus  under  another  name,  is  the 
first  man,  and  his  mother  was  an  ash-tree.  In 
Norse  mythology,  also,  the  gods  were  said  to 
have  made  the  first  man  out  of  the  ash-tree 
Yggdrasil.  The  association  of  the  heavenly  fire 
with  the  life-giving  forces  of  nature  is  very  com- 
mon in  the  myths  of  both  hemispheres,  and  in 
view  of  the  facts  already  cited  it  need  not  sur- 
prise us.  Hence  the  Hindu  Agni  and  the  Norse 
Thor  were  patrons  of  marriage,  and  in  Norway 
the  most  lucky  day  on  which  to  be  married  is 
still  supposed  to  be  Thursday,  which  in  old 
times  was  the  day  of  the  fire-god.2  Hence  the 
lightning  plants  have  divers  virtues  in  matters 
pertaining  to  marriage.  The  Romans  made 
their  wedding  torches  of  white-thorn;  hazel- 

1  In  the  Vedas  the  rain-god  Soma,  originally  the  personi- 
fication of  the  sacrificial  ambrosia,  is  the  deity  who  imparts  to 
men  life,  knowledge,  and  happiness.    See  Breal,  Hercule  et 
Cafus,  p.  85.    Tylor,  Primitive  Culture,  vol.  ii.  p.  277. 

2  We  may,  perhaps,  see  here  the  reason  for  making  the 
Greek  fire-god  Hephaistos  the  husband  of  Aphrodite. 

88 


THE  DESCENT  OF  FIRE 

nuts  are  still  used  all  over  Europe  in  divina- 
tions relating  to  the  future  lover  or  sweetheart ;  * 
and  under  a  mistletoe  bough  it  is  allowable  for 
a  gentleman  to  kiss  a  lady.  A  vast  number 
of  kindred  superstitions  are  described  by  Mr. 
Kelly,  to  whom  I  am  indebted  for  many  of 
these  examples.2 

Thus  we  reach  at  last  the  completed  concep- 
tion of  the  divining  rod,  or  as  it  is  called  in  this 
sense  the  wish  rod,  with  its  kindred  talismans, 
from  Aladdin's  lamp  and  the  purse  of  Bedred- 
din  Hassan,  to  the  Sangreal,  the  philosopher's 
stone,  and  the  goblets  of  Oberon  and  Tristram. 
These  symbols  of  the  reproductive  energies  of 
nature,  which  give  to  the  possessor  every  good 
and  perfect  gift,  illustrate  the  uncurbed  belief 
in  the  power  of  wish  which  the  ancient  man 
shared  with  modern  children.  In  the  Norse 
story  of  Frodi's  quern,  the  myth  assumes  a 
whimsical  shape.  The  prose  Edda  tells  of  a 

1  "  Our  country  maidens  are  well  aware  that  triple  leaves 
plucked  at  hazard   from   the  common  ash  are  worn  in  the 
breast  for  the  purpose  of  causing  prophetic  dreams  respecting 
a  dilatory  lover.    The  leaves  of  the  yellow  trefoil  are  sup- 
posed to  possess  similar  virtues."      Harland  and  Wilkinson, 
Lancashire  Folk-Lore,  p.  20. 

2  '*  In  Peru,  a  mighty  and  far- worshipped  deity  was  Cat- 
equil,  the  thunder-god,   ...   he  who  in  thunder-flash  and 
clap  hurls  from  his  sling  the  small,  round,  smooth  thunder- 
stones,  treasured  in  the  villages  as  fire  fetiches  and  charms  to 
kindle  the  flames  of  love. "      Tylor,  op.  fit.  vol.  ii.  p.  239. 

89 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

primeval  age  of  gold,  when  everybody  had 
whatever  he  wanted.  This  was  because  the 
giant  Frodi  had  a  mill  which  ground  out  peace 
and  plenty  and  abundance  of  gold  withal,  so  that 
it  lay  about  the  roads  like  pebbles.  Through 
the  inexcusable  avarice  of  Frodi,  this  wonderful 
implement  was  lost  to  the  world.  For  he  kept 
his  maid-servants  working  at  the  mill  until  they 
got  out  of  patience,  and  began  to  make  it  grind 
out  hatred  and  war.  Then  came  a  mighty  sea- 
rover  by  night  and  slew  Frodi  and  carried  away 
the  maids  and  the  quern.  When  he  got  well 
out  to  sea,  he  told  them  to  grind  out  salt,  and 
so  they  did  with  a  vengeance.  They  ground  the 
ship  full  of  salt  and  sank  it,  and  so  the  quern 
was  lost  forever,  but  the  sea  remains  salt  unto 
this  day. 

Mr.  Kelly  rightly  identifies  Frodi  with  the 
sun-god  Fro  or  Freyr,  and  observes  that  the 
magic  mill  is  only  another  form  of  the  fire- 
churn,  or  chark.  According  to  another  version 
the  quern  is  still  grinding  away  and  keeping 
the  sea  salt,  and  over  the  place  where  it  lies 
there  is  a  prodigious  whirlpool  or  maelstrom 
which  sucks  down  ships. 

In  its  completed  shape,  the  lightning  wand 
is  the  caduceus,  or  rod  of  Hermes.  I  observed, 
in  the  preceding  paper,  that  in  the  Greek  con- 
ception of  Hermes  there  have  been  fused  to- 
gether the  attributes  of  two  deities  who  were 
90 


THE  DESCENT  OF  FIRE 

originally  distinct.  The  Hermes  of  the  Ho- 
meric Hymn  is  a  wind-god ;  but  the  later 
Hermes  Agoraios,  the  patron  of  gymnasia,  the 
mutilation  of  whose  statues  caused  such  terri- 
ble excitement  in  Athens  during  the  Pelopon- 
nesian  War,  is  a  very  different  personage.  He 
is  a  fire-god,  invested  with  many  solar  attributes, 
and  represents  the  quickening  forces  of  nature. 
In  this  capacity  the  invention  of  fire  was  as- 
cribed to  him  as  well  as  to  Prometheus  ;  he  was 
said  to  be  the  friend  of  mankind,  and  was  sur- 
named  Ploutodotes,  or  "  the  giver  of  wealth." 
The  Norse  wind-god  Odin  has  in  like  man- 
ner acquired  several  of  the  attributes  of  Freyr 
and  Thor.1  His  lightning  spear,  which  is  bor- 
rowed from  Thor,  appears  by  a  comical  meta- 
morphosis as  a  wish  rod  which  will  administer 
a  sound  thrashing  to  the  enemies  of  its  posses- 
sor. Having  cut  a  hazel  stick,  you  have  only 
to  lay  down  an  old  coat,  name  your  intended 
victim,  wish  he  was  there,  and  whack  away  :  he 
will  howl  with  pain  at  every  blow.  This  won- 
derful cudgel  appears  in  Dasent's  tale  of  "  The 
Lad  who  went  to  the  North  Wind,"  with  which 
we  may  conclude  this  discussion.  The  story  is 
told,  with  little  variation,  in  Hindustan,  Ger- 
many, and  Scandinavia. 

1  In  Polynesia,  €f  the  great  deity  Maui  adds  a  new  com- 
plication to  his  enigmatic  solar-celestial  character  by  appearing 
as  a  wind-god."  Tylor,  op.  cit.  vol.  ii.  p.  242. 

91 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

The  North  Wind,  representing  the  mischiev- 
ous Hermes,  once  blew  away  a  poor  woman's 
meal.  So  her  boy  went  to  the  North  Wind  and 
demanded  his  rights  for  the  meal  his  mother 
had  lost.  "  I  have  n't  got  your  meal,"  said  the 
Wind,  "  but  here  's  a  tablecloth  which  will  cover 
itself  with  an  excellent  dinner  whenever  you  tell 
it  to."  So  the  lad  took  the  cloth  and  started  for 
home.  At  nightfall  he  stopped  at  an  inn,  spread 
his  cloth  on  the  table,  and  ordered  it  to  cover 
itself  with  good  things,  and  so  it  did.  But  the 
landlord,  who  thought  it  would  be  money  in 
his  pocket  to  have  such  a  cloth,  stole  it  after  the 
boy  had  gone  to  bed,  and  substituted  another 
just  like  it  in  appearance.  Next  day  the  boy 
went  home  in  great  glee-  to  show  off  for  his 
mother's  astonishment  what  the  North  Wind 
had  given  him,  but  all  the  dinner  he  got  that 
day  was  what  the  old  woman  cooked  for  him. 
In  his  despair  he  went  back  to  the  North  Wind 
and  called  him  a  liar,  and  again  demanded  his 
rights  for  the  meal  he  had  lost.  "  I  have  n't  got 
your  meal,"  said  the  Wind,  "  but  here  's  a  ram 
which  will  drop  money  out  of  its  fleece  when- 
ever you  tell  it  to."  So  the  lad  travelled  home, 
stopping  over-night  at  the  same  inn,  and  when 
he  got  home  he  found  himself  with  a  ram  which 
did  n't  drop  coins  out  of  its  fleece.  A  third  time 
he  visited  the  North  Wind,  and  obtained  a  bag 
with  a  stick  in  it  which,  at  the  word  of  command, 
92 


THE  DESCENT  OF  FIRE 

would  jump  out  of  the  bag  and  lay  on  until  told 
to  stop.  Guessing  how  matters  stood  as  to  his 
cloth  and  ram,  he  turned  in  at  the  same  tavern, 
and  going  to  a  bench  lay  down  as  if  to  sleep. 
The  landlord  thought  that  a  stick  carried  about 
in  a  bag  must  be  worth  something,  and  so  he 
stole  quietly  up  to  the  bag,  meaning  to  get  the 
stick  out  and  change  it.  But  just  as  he  got 
within  whacking  distance,  the  boy  gave  the  word, 
and  out  jumped  the  stick  and  beat  the  thief 
until  he  promised  to  give  back  the  ram  and  the 
tablecloth.  And  so  the  boy  got  his  rights  for 
the  meal  which  the  North  Wind  had  blown 
away. 

October,  1870 


93 


Ill 

WEREWOLVES  AND   SWAN- 
MAIDENS 

IT  is  related  by  Ovid  that  Lykaon,  king  of 
Arkadia,  once  invited  Zeus  to  dinner,  and 
served  up  for  him  a  dish  of  human  flesh, 
in  order  to  test  the  god's  omniscience.  But 
the  trick  miserably  failed,  and  the  impious  mon- 
arch received  the  punishment  which  his  crime 
had  merited.  He  was  transformed  into  a  wolf, 
that  he  might  henceforth  feed  upon  the  viands 
with  which  he  had  dared  to  pollute  the  table 
of  the  king  of  Olympos.  From  that  time  forth, 
according  to  Pliny,  a  noble  Arkadian  was  each 
year,  on  the  festival  of  Zeus  Lykaios,  led  to  the 
margin  of  a  certain  lake.  Hanging  his  clothes 
upon  a  tree,  he  then  plunged  into  the  water  and 
became  a  wolf.  For  the  space  of  nine  years  he 
roamed  about  the  adjacent  woods,  and  then,  if 
he  had  not  tasted  human  flesh  during  all  this 
time,  he  was  allowed  to  swim  back  to  the  place 
where  his  clothes  were  hanging,  put  them  on, 
and  return  to  his  natural  form.  It  is  further 
related  of  a  certain  Demainetos,  that,  having 
once  been  present  at  a  human  sacrifice  to  Zeus 
94 


WEREWOLVES  AND  SWAN-MAIDENS 

Lykaios,  he  ate  of  the  flesh,  and  was  transformed 
into  a  wolf  for  a  term  of  ten  years.1 

These  and  other  similar  mythical  germs  were 
developed  by  the  mediaeval  imagination  into  the 
horrible  superstition  of  werewolves. 

A  werewolf,  or  kup-getrou?  was  a  person  who 
had  the  power  of  transforming  himself  into  a 
wolf,  being  endowed,  while  in  the  lupine  state, 
with  the  intelligence  of  a  man,  the  ferocity  of  a 
wolf,  and  the  irresistible  strength  of  a  demon. 
The  ancients  believed  in  the  existence  of  such 
persons ;  but  in  the  Middle  Ages  the  meta- 
morphosis was  supposed  to  be  a  phenomenon 
of  daily  occurrence,  and  even  at  the  present  day, 
in  secluded  portions  of  Europe,  the  supersti- 
tion is  still  cherished  by  peasants.  The  belief, 
moreover,  is  supported  by  a  vast  amount  of 
evidence,  which  can  neither  be  argued  nor  pooh- 
poohed  into  insignificance.  It  is  the  business 
of  the  comparative  mythologist  to  trace  the  pedi- 
gree of  the  ideas  from  which  such  a  conception 
may  have  sprung ;  while  to  the  critical  historian 
belongs  the  task  of  ascertaining  and  classifying 
the  actual  facts  which  this  particular  conception 
was  used  to  interpret. 

The   mediaeval    belief  in  werewolves  is  es- 

1  Compare  Plato,  Republic,  viii.  15. 

2  Were-?volf=  man-wolf,  wer  meaning  "  man."    Garou 
is  a  Gallic  corruption  of  werewolf,  so  that  loup-garou  is  a  tau- 
tological expression. 

95 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

pecially  adapted  to  illustrate  the  complicated 
manner  in  which  divers  mythical  conceptions 
and  misunderstood  natural  occurrences  will  com- 
bine to  generate  a  long-enduring  superstition. 
Mr.  Cox,  indeed,  would  have  us  believe  that 
the  whole  notion  arose  from  an  unintentional 
play  upon  words ;  but  the  careful  survey  of  the 
field,  which  has  been  taken  by  Hertz  and  Bar- 
ing-Gould, leads  to  the  conclusion  that  many 
other  circumstances  have  been  at  work.  The 
delusion,  though  doubtless  purely  mythical  in 
its  origin,  nevertheless  presents  in  its  developed 
state  a  curious  mixture  of  mythical  and  histor- 
ical elements. 

With  regard  to  the  Arkadian  legend,  taken 
by  itself,  Mr.  Cox  is  probably  right.  The  story 
seems  to  belong  to  that  large  class  of  myths 
which  have  been  devised  in  order  to  explain  the 
meaning  of  equivocal  words  whose  true  signifi- 
cance has  been  forgotten.  The  epithet  Lykaios, 
as  applied  to  Zeus,  had  originally  no  reference 
to  wolves  :  it  means  "  the  bright  one,"  and  gave 
rise  to  lycanthropic  legends  only  because  of 
the  similarity  in  sound  between  the  names  for 
"wolf"  and  "  brightness."  Aryan  mythology 
furnishes  numerous  other  instances  of  this  con- 
fusion. The  solar  deity,  Phoibos  Lykegenes, 
was  originally  the  "  offspring  of  light ;  "  but 
popular  etymology  made  a  kind  of  werewolf 
of  him  by  interpreting  his  name  as  the  "  wolf- 
96 


WEREWOLVES  AND  SWAN-MAIDENS 

born."  The  name  of  the  hero  Autolykos  means 
simply  the  "  self-luminous  ;  "  but  it  was  more 
frequently  interpreted  as  meaning  "  a  very  wolf," 
in  allusion  to  the  supposed  character  of  its  pos- 
sessor. Bazra,  the  name  of  the  citadel  of  Car- 
thage, was  the  Punic  word  for  "  fortress  ;  "  but 
the  Greeks  confounded  it  with  byrsa,  "  a  hide," 
and  hence  the  story  of  the  ox-hides  cut  into 
strips  by  Dido  in  order  to  measure  the  area  of 
the  place  to  be  fortified.  The  old  theory  that 
the  Irish  were  Phoenicians  had  a  similar  origin. 
The  name  Fena,  used  to  designate  the  old  Scoti 
or  Irish,  is  the  plural  of  Fion,  "  fair,"  seen  in 
the  name  of  the  hero  Fion  Gall,  or  "  Fin- 
gal  ;  "  but  the  monkish  chroniclers  identified 
Fena  with  Phoinix,  whence  arose  the  myth  ;  and 
by  a  like  misunderstanding  of  the  epithet  Mi~ 
ledh,  or  "warrior,"  applied  to  Fion  by  the  Gaelic 
bards,  there  was  generated  a  mythical  hero,  Mi- 
lesius,  and  the  sobriquet  "  Milesian,"  colloqui- 
ally employed  in  speaking  of  the  Irish.1  So  the 
Franks  explained  the  name  of  the  town  Daras, 
in  Mesopotamia,  by  the  story  that  the  Em- 
peror Justinian  once  addressed  the  chief  magis- 
trate with  the  exclamation,  daras,  "  thou  shalt 
give  :  "  2  the  Greek  chronicler,  Malalas,  who 
spells  the  name  Doras,  informs  us  with  equal 

1  Meyer,  in  Bunsen's   Philosophy  of  Universal  History, 
vol.  i.  p.  151. 

2  Aimoin,  De  Gestis  Franc  or  urn,  ii.  5. 

97 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

complacency  that  it  was  the  place  where  Alex- 
ander overcame  Codomannus  with  S6pvy  "  the 
spear."  A  certain  passage  in  the  Alps  is  called 
Scaletta,  from  its  resemblance  to  a  staircase  ;  but 
according  to  a  local  tradition  it  owes  its  name 
to  the  bleaching  skeletons  of  a  company  of  Moors 
who  were  destroyed  there  in  the  eighth  century, 
while  attempting  to  penetrate  into  Northern  Italy. 
The  name  of  Antwerp  denotes  the  town  built 
at  a  "wharf;  "  but  it  sounds  very  much  like 
the  Flemish  handt  werpen,  "  hand-throwing  :  " 
"  hence  arose  the  legend  of  the  giant  who  cut 
off  the  hands  of  those  who  passed  his  castle 
without  paying  him  blackmail,  and  threw  them 
into  the  Scheldt."  1  In  the  myth  of  Bishop 
Hatto,  related  in  a  previous  paper,  the  Mause- 
thurm  is  a  corruption  of  maut-thurm ;  it  means 
"  customs-tower,"  and  has  nothing  to  do  with 
mice  or  rats.  Doubtless  this  etymology  was  the 
cause  of  the  floating  myth  getting  fastened  to 
this  particular  place  ;  that  it  did  not  give  rise  to 
the  myth  itself  is  shown  by  the  existence  of  the 
same  tale  in  other  places.  Somewhere  in  Eng- 
land there  is  a  place  called  Chateau  Vert ;  the 
peasantry  have  corrupted  it  into  Shotover,  and 
say  that  it  has  borne  that  name  ever  since  Little 
John  shot  over  a  high  hill  in  the  neighbour- 
hood.2 Latium  means  "  the  flat  land  ;  "  but, 

1  Taylor,  Words  and  Places,  p.  393. 
a  Very  similar  to  this  is  the  etymological  confusion  upon 
98 


WEREWOLVES  AND  SWAN-MAIDENS 

according  to  Virgil,  it  is  the  place  where  Saturn 
once. hid  (latuisset)  from  the  wrath  of  his  usurp- 
ing son  Jupiter.1 

It  was  in  this  way  that  the  constellation  of 
the  Great  Bear  received  its  name.  The  Greek 
word  arktosy  answering  to  the  Sanskrit  riksha, 
meant  originally  any  bright  object,  and  was  ap- 
plied to  the  bear  —  for  what  reason  it  would 
not  be  easy  to  state  —  and  to  that  constella- 
tion which  was  most  conspicuous  in  the  lati- 
tude of  the  early  home  of  the  Aryans.  When 
the  Greeks  had  long  forgotten  why  these  stars 
were  called  arktoi,  they  symbolized  them  as  a 
Great  Bear  fixed  in  the  sky.  So  that,  as  Max 
Miiller  observes,  "  the  name  of  the  Arctic  re- 
gions "Vests  on  a  misunderstanding  of  a  name 
framed  thousands  of  years  ago  in  Central  Asia, 
and  the  surprise  with  which  many  a  thoughtful 

which  is  based  the  myth  of  the  "  confusion  of  tongues  '*  in 
the  eleventh  chapter  of  Genesis.  The  name  "Babel**  is 
really  Bab- 1 1,  or  "  the  gate  of  God  ;  '*  but  the  Hebrew 
writer  erroneously  derives  the  word  from  the  root  V22»  balal, 
"to  confuse;"  and  hence  arises  the  mythical  explanation 
that  Babel  was  a  place  where  human  speech  became  confused. 
See  Rawlinson,  in  Smith's  Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  vol.  i. 
p.  149  ;  Renan,  Histoire  des  Langues  Semitiques,  vol.  i.  p.  32; 
Donaldson,  New  Cratylus,  p.  74,  note;  Colenso  on  the  Pen- 
tateuch, vol.  iv.  p.  268. 

1  Virg.  &n,  viii.  322.  With  Latium  compare  TrAcmk, 
Skr.  prath  (to  spread  out),  Eng.  fiat.  Ferrar,  Comparative 
Grammar  of  Greek,  Latin,  and  Sanskrit,  vol.  i.  p.  31. 

99 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

observer  has  looked  at  these  seven  bright  stars, 
wondering  why  they  were  ever  called  the  Bear, 
is  removed  by  a  reference  to  the  early  annals  of 
human  speech."  Among  the  Algonquins  the 
sun-god  Michabo  was  represented  as  a  hare,  his 
name  being  compounded  of  michiy  "  great,"  and 
waboSy  "a  hare  ;  "  yet  wabos  also  meant  "white," 
so  that  the  god  was  doubtless  originally  called 
simply  "  the  Great  White  One."  The  same 
naive  process  has  made  bears  of  the  Arkadians, 
whose  name,  like  that  of  the  Lykians,  merely 
signified  that  they  were  "  children  of  light ;  " 
and  the  metamorphosis  of  Kallisto,  mother  of 
Arkas,  into  a  bear,  and  of  Lykaon  into  a  wolf, 
rests  apparently  upon  no  other  foundation  than 
an  erroneous  etymology.  Originally  Lykaon 
was  neither  man  nor  wolf;  he  was  but  another 
form  of  Phoibos  Lykegenes,  the  light-born 
sun,  and,  as  Mr.  Cox  has  shown,  his  legend  is 
but  a  variation  of  that  of  Tantalos,  who  in  time 
of  drought  offers  to  Zeus  the  flesh  of  his  own 
offspring,  the  withered  fruits,  and  is  punished 
for  his  impiety. 

It  seems  to  me,  however,  that  this  explana- 
tion, though  valid  as  far  as  it  goes,  is  inadequate 
to  explain  all  the  features  of  the  werewolf  su- 
perstition, or  to  account  for  its  presence  in  all 
Aryan  countries  and  among  many  peoples  who 
are  not  of  Aryan  origin.  There  can  be  no 


100 


WEREWOLVES  AND  SWAN-MAIDENS 

doubt  that  the  myth-makers  transformed  Ly- 
kaon  into  a  wolf  because  of  his  unlucky  name  ; 
because  what  really  meant  "  bright  man " 
seemed  to  them  to  mean  "  wolf-man  ;  "  but  it 
has  by  no  means  been  proved  that  a  similar 
equivocation  occurred  in  the  case  of  all  the 
primitive  Aryan  werewolves,  nor  has  it  been 
shown  to  be  probable  that  among  each  people 
the  being  with  the  uncanny  name  got  thus  acci- 
dentally confounded  with  the  particular  beast 
most  dreaded  by  that  people.  Etymology  alone 
does  not  explain  the  fact  that  while  Gaul  has 
been  the  favourite  haunt  of  the  man-wolf, 
Scandinavia  has  been  preferred  by  the  man- 
bear,  and  Hindustan  by  the  man-tiger.  To  ac- 
count for  such  a  widespread  phenomenon  we 
must  seek  a  more  general  cause. 

Nothing  is  more  strikingly  characteristic  of 
primitive  thinking  than  the  close  community 
of  nature  which  it  assumes  between  man  and 
brute.  The  doctrine  of  metempsychosis,  which 
is  found  in  some  shape  or  other  all  over  the 
world,  implies  a  fundamental  identity  between 
the  two ;  the  Hindu  is  taught  to  respect  the 
flocks  browsing  in  the  meadow,  and  will  on  no 
account  lift  his  hand  against  a  cow,  for  who 
knows  but  it  may  be  his  own  grandmother  ? 
The  recent  researches  of  Mr.  M'Lennan  and 
Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  have  served  to  connect 


101 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

this  feeling  with  the  primeval  worship  of  ances- 
tors and  with  the  savage  customs  of  totemism.1 
The  worship  of  ancestors  seems  to  have  been 
everywhere  the  oldest  systematized  form  of 
fetichistic  religion.  The  reverence  paid  to  the 
chieftain  of  the  tribe  while  living  was  contin- 
ued and  exaggerated  after  his  death.  The  un- 
civilized man  is  everywhere  incapable  of  grasp- 
ing the  idea  of  death  as  it  is  apprehended  by 
civilized  people.  He  cannot  understand  that  a 
man  should  pass  away  so  as  to  be  no  longer 
capable  of  communicating  with  his  fellows.  The 
image  of  his  dead  chief  or  comrade  remains  in 
his  mind,  and  the  savage's  philosophic  realism 
far  surpasses  that  of  the  most  extravagant  me- 
diaeval schoolmen ;  to  him  the  persistence  of 
the  idea  implies  the  persistence  of  the  reality. 
The  dead  man,  accordingly,  is  not  really  dead ; 
he  has  thrown  off  his  body  like  a  husk,  yet  still 
retains  his  old  appearance,  and  often  shows 
himself  to  his  old  friends,  especially  after  night- 
fall. He  is  no  doubt  possessed  of  more  exten- 
sive powers  than  before  his  transformation,2  and 

1  M'Lennan,  "  The  Worship  of  Animals  and  Plants," 
Fortnightly  Review,  N.  s.  vol.  vi.  pp.  407-427,  562-582, 
vol.  vii.  pp.  194-216  ;  Spencer,  The  Origin  of  dnimal  Wor- 
ship, id.  vol.  vii.  pp.  535-550,  reprinted  in  his  Recent 
Discussions  in  Science,  etc.,  pp.  31—56. 

8  Thus  is  explained  the  singular  conduct  of  the  Hindu, 
who  slays  himself  before  his  enemy's  door,  in  order  to  acquire 
greater  power  of  injuring  him.  "  A  certain  Brahman,  on 
102 


WEREWOLVES  AND  SWAN-MAIDENS 

may  very  likely  have  a  share  in  regulating  the 
weather,  granting  or  withholding  rain.  There- 
fore, argues  the  uncivilized  mind,  he  is  to  be 
cajoled  and  propitiated  more  sedulously  now 
than  before  his  strange  transformation. 

This  kind  of  worship  still  maintains  a  lan- 
guid existence  as  the  state  religion  of  China,  and 
it  still  exists  as  a  portion  of  Brahmanism ;  but 
in  the  Vedic  religion  it  is  to  be  seen  in  all  its 
vigour  and  in  all  its  naive  simplicity.  Accord- 
ing to  the  ancient  Aryan,  the  Pitrisy  or  "  Fa- 
thers "  (Lat.  patres),  live  in  the  sky  along  with 
Yama,  the  great  original  Pitri  of  mankind. 
This  first  man  came  down  from  heaven  in  the 
lightning,  and  back  to  heaven  both  himself  and 
all  his  offspring  must  have  gone.  There  they 
distribute  light  unto  men  below,  and  they  shine 
themselves  as  stars  ;  and  hence  the  Christian- 

whose  lands  a  Kshatriya  raja  had  built  a  house,  ripped  him- 
self up  in  revenge,  and  became  a  demon  of  the  kind  called 
Brahmadasyu,  who  has  been  ever  since  the  terror  of  the  whole 
country,  and  is  the  most  common  village-deity  in  Kharakpur. 
Toward  the  close  of  the  last  century  there  were  two  Brahmans, 
out  of  whose  house  a  man  had  wrongfully,  as  they  thought, 
taken  forty  rupees  ;  whereupon  one  of  the  Brahmans  pro- 
ceeded to  cut  off  his  own  mother's  head,  with  the  professed 
view,  entertained  by  both  mother  and  son,  that  her  spirit, 
excited  by  the  beating  of  a  large  drum  during  forty  days, 
might  haunt,  torment,  and  pursue  to  death  the  taker  of  their 
money  and  those  concerned  with  him."  Tylor,  Primitivl 
Culture,  vol.  ii.  p.  103. 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

ized  German  peasant,  fifty  centuries  later,  tells 
his  children  that  the  stars  are  angels'  eyes,  and 
the  English  cottager  impresses  it  on  the  youth- 
ful mind  that  it  is  wicked  to  point  at  the  stars, 
though  why  he  cannot  tell.  But  the  Pitris  are 
not  stars  only,  nor  do  they  content  themselves 
with  idly  looking  down  on  the  affairs  of  men, 
after  the  fashion  of  the  laissez-faire  divinities 
of  Lucretius.  They  are,  on  the  contrary,  very 
busy  with  the  weather ;  they  send  rain,  thun- 
der, and  lightning ;  and  they  especially  delight 
in  rushing  over  the  housetops  in  a  great  gale 
of  wind,  led  on  by  their  chief,  the  mysterious 
huntsman,  Hermes  or  Odin. 

It  has  been  elsewhere  shown  that  the  howl- 
ing dog,  or  wish-hound  of  Hermes,  whose  ap- 
pearance under  the  windows  of  a  sick  person 
is  such  an  alarming  portent,  is  merely  the  tem- 
pest personified.  Throughout  all  Aryan  my- 
thology the  souls  of  the  dead  are  supposed  to 
ride  on  the  night-wind,  with  their  howling  dogs, 
gathering  into  their  throng  the  souls  of  those 
just  dying  as  they  pass  by  their  houses.1  Some- 
times the  whole  complex  conception  is  wrapped 
up  in  the  notion  of  a  single  dog,  the  messen- 
ger of  the  god  of  shades,  who  comes  to  sum- 
mon the  departing  soul.  Sometimes,  instead  of 

1  Hence,  in  many  parts  of  Europe,  it  is  still  customary  to 
open  the  windows  when  a  person  dies,  in  order  that  the  soul 
may  not  be  hindered  in  joining  the  mystic  cavalcade. 
104 


WEREWOLVES  AND  SWAN-MAIDENS 

a  dog,  we  have  a  great  ravening  wolf  who  comes 
to  devour  its  victim  and  extinguish  the  sunlight 
of  life,  as  that  old  wolf  of  the  tribe  of  Fenrir 
devoured  little  Red  Riding-Hood  with  her  robe 
of  scarlet  twilight.1  Thus  we  arrive  at  a  true 
werewolf  myth.  The  storm-wind,  or  howling 
Rakshasa  of  Hindu  folk-lore,  is  "a  great  mis- 
shapen giant  with  red  beard  and  red  hair,  with 
pointed  protruding  teeth,  ready  to  lacerate  and 
devour  human  flesh  ;  his  body  is  covered  with 
coarse,  bristling  hair,  his  huge  mouth  is  open, 
he  looks  from  side  to  side  as  he  walks,  lusting 
after  the  flesh  and  blood  of  men,  to  satisfy  his 
raging  hunger  and  quench  his  consuming  thirst. 

1  The  story  of  little  Red  Riding- Hood  is  "  mutilated  in 
the  English  version,  but  known  more  perfectly  by  old  wives 
in  Germany,  who  can  tell  that  the  lovely  little  maid  in  her 
shining  red  satin  cloak  was  swallowed  with  her  grandmother 
by  the  wolf,  till  they  both  came  out  safe  and  sound  when  the 
hunter  cut  open  the  sleeping  beast."  Tylor,  Primitive 
Culture,  i.  307,  where  also  see  the  kindred  Russian  story  of 
Vasilissa  the  Beautiful.  Compare  the  case  of  Tom  Thumb, 
who  "  was  swallowed  by  a  cow  and  came  out  unhurt;" 
the  story  of  Saktideva  swallowed  by  the  fish  and  cut  out 
again,  in  Somadeva  Bhatta,  ii.  118—184;  anc^  tne  story 
of  Jonah  swallowed  by  the  whale,  in  the  Old  Testament. 
All  these  are  different  versions  of  the  same  myth,  and  refer  to 
the  alternate  swallowing  up  and  casting  forth  of  Day  by  Night, 
which  is  commonly  personified  as  a  wolf,  and  now  and  then 
as  a  great  fish.  Compare  Grimm's  story  of  the  Wolf  and 
Seven  Kids,  Tylor,  loc.  cit.,  and  see  Early  History  of  Man- 
kind, p.  337  ;  Hardy,  Manual  of  Buddhism,  p.  501. 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

Toward  nightfall  his  strength  increases  mani- 
fold ;  he  can  change  his  shape  at  will ;  he  haunts 
the  woods,  and  roams  howling  through  the 
jungle."1 

Now  if  the  storm-wind  is  a  host  of  Pitris,  or 
one  great  Pitri  who  appears  as  a  fearful  giant, 
and  is  also  a  pack  of  wolves  or  wish-hounds, 
or  a  single  savage  dog  or  wolf,  the  inference  is 
obvious  to  the  mythopoeic  mind  that  men  may 
become  wolves,  at  least  after  death.  And  to 
the  uncivilized  thinker  this  inference  is  strength- 
ened, as  Mr.  Spencer  has  shown,  by  evidence 
registered  on  his  own  tribal  totem  or  heraldic 
emblem.  The  bears  and  lions  and  leopards  of 
heraldry  are  the  degenerate  descendants  of  the 
totem  of  savagery  which  designated  the  tribe  by 
a  beast  symbol.  To  the  untutored  mind  there 
is  everything  in  a  name  ;  and  the  descendant 
of  Brown  Bear  or  Yellow  Tiger  or  Silver  Hy- 
aena cannot  be  pronounced  unfaithful  to  his  own 
style  of  philosophizing,  if  he  regards  his  ances- 
tors, who  career  about  his  hut  in  the  darkness 
of  night,  as  belonging  to  whatever  order  of 
beasts  his  totem  associations  may  suggest. 

Thus  we  not  only  see  a  ray  of  light  thrown 
on  the  subject  of  metempsychosis,  but  we  get 
a  glimpse  of  the  curious  process  by  which  the 
intensely  realistic  mind  of  antiquity  arrived  at 

1  Baring-Gould,  Book  of  Werewolves,  p.  178  ;  Muir, 
Sanskrit  Texts,  ii.  435. 

106 


WEREWOLVES  AND  SWAN-MAIDENS 

the  notion  that  men  could  be  transformed  into 
beasts.  For  the  belief  that  the  soul  can  tem- 
porarily quit  the  body  during  lifetime  has  been 
universally  entertained ;  and  from  the  concep- 
tion of  wolf-like  ghosts  it  was  but  a  short  step 
to  the  conception  of  corporeal  werewolves.  In 
the  Middle  Ages  the  phenomena  of  trance  and 
catalepsy  were  cited  in  proof  of  the  theory  that 
the  soul  can  leave  the  body  and  afterward  return 
to  it.  Hence  it  was  very  difficult  for  a  person 
accused  of  witchcraft  to  prove  an  alibi;  for  to 
any  amount  of  evidence  showing  that  the  body 
was  innocently  reposing  at  home  and  in  bed,  the 
rejoinder  was  obvious  that  the  soul  may  never- 
theless have  been  in  attendance  at  the  witches' 
sabbath  or  busied  in  maiming  a  neighbour's 
cattle.  According  to  one  mediaeval  notion,  the 
soul  of  the  werewolf  quit  its  human  body,  which 
remained  in  a  trance  until  its  return.1 

The  mythological  basis  of  the  werewolf  su- 
perstition is  now,  I  believe,  sufficiently  indicated. 
The  belief,  however,  did  not  reach  its  complete 
development,  or  acquire  its  most  horrible  fea- 
tures, until  the  pagan  habits  of  thought  which 
had  originated  it  were  modified  by  contact  with 
Christian  theology.  To  the  ancient  there  was 
nothing  necessarily  diabolical  in  the  transforma- 
tion of  a  man  into  a  beast.  But  Christianity, 

1  In  those  days  even  an  after-dinner  nap  seems  to  have 
been  thought  uncanny.     See  Dasent,  Burnt  Njal,  i.  xxi. 
107 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

which  retained  such  a  host  of  pagan  concep- 
tions under  such  strange  disguises,  which  de- 
graded the  "  All-father  "  Odin  into  the  ogre  of 
the  castle  to  which  Jack  climbed  on  his  bean- 
stalk, and  which  blended  the  beneficent  light- 
ning-god Thor  and  the  mischievous  Hermes 
and  the  faun-like  Pan  into  the  grotesque  Teu- 
tonic Devil,  did  not  fail  to  impart  a  new  and 
fearful  character  to  the  belief  in  werewolves. 
Lycanthropy  became  regarded  as  a  species  of 
witchcraft ;  the  werewolf  was  supposed  to  have 
obtained  his  peculiar  powers  through  the  favour 
or  connivance  of  the  Devil ;  and  hundreds  of 
persons  were  burned  alive  or  broken  on  the 
wheel  for  having  availed  themselves  of  the  priv- 
ilege of  beast  metamorphosis.  The  superstition, 
thus  widely  extended  and  greatly  intensified,  was 
confirmed  by  many  singular  phenomena  which 
cannot  be  omitted  from  any  thorough  discussion 
of  the  nature  and  causes  of  lycanthropy. 

The  first  of  these  phenomena  is  the  Berserker 
insanity,  characteristic  of  Scandinavia,  but  not 
unknown  in  other  countries.  In  times  when  kill- 
ing one's  enemies  often  formed  a  part  of  the  ne- 
cessary business  of  life,  persons  were  frequently 
found  who  killed  for  the  mere  love  of  the 
thing  ;  with  whom  slaughter  was  an  end  desir- 
able in  itself,  not  merely  a  means  to  a  desirable 
end.  What  the  miser  is  in  an  age  which  worships 
mammon,  such  was  the  Berserker  in  an  age 
108 


WEREWOLVES  AND  SWAN-MAIDENS 

when  the  current  idea  of  heaven  was  that  of  a 
place  where  people  could  hack  each  other  to 
pieces  through  all  eternity,  and  when  the  man 
who  refused  a  challenge  was  punished  with  con- 
fiscation of  his  estates.  With  these  Northmen, 
in  the  ninth  century,  the  chief  business  and 
amusement  in  life  was  to  set  sail  for  some 
pleasant  country,  like  Spain  or  France,  and 
make  all  the  coasts  and  navigable  rivers  hide- 
ous with  rapine  and  massacre.  When  at  home, 
in  the  intervals  between  their  freebooting  expe- 
ditions, they  were  liable  to  become  possessed  by 
a  strange  homicidal  madness,  during  which  they 
would  array  themselves  in  the  skins  of  wolves 
or  bears,  and  sally  forth  by  night  to  crack  the 
backbones,  smash  the  skulls,  and  sometimes  to 
drink  with  fiendish  glee  the  blood  of  unwary 
travellers  or  loiterers.  These  fits  of  madness 
were  usually  followed  by  periods  of  utter  ex- 
haustion and  nervous  depression.1 

Such,  according  to  the  unanimous  testimony 
of  historians,  was  the  celebrated  "  Berserker 
rage,"  not  peculiar  to  the  Northland,  although 
there  most  conspicuously  manifested.  Taking 

1  See  Dasent,  Burnt  Njal,  vol.  i.  p.  xxii.  ;  Grettis  Saga, 
by  Magnusson  and  Morris,  chap.  xix. ;  Viga  Glum's  Saga, 
by  Sir  Edmund  Head,  p.  13,  note,  where  the  Berserkers 
are  said  to  have  maddened  themselves  with  drugs.  Dasent 
compares  them  with  the  Malays,  who  work  themselves  into 
a  frenzy  by  means  of  arrack,  or  hasheesh,  and  run  amuck. 
109 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

now  a  step  in  advance,  we  find  that  in  com- 
paratively civilized  countries  there  have  been 
many  cases  of  monstrous  homicidal  insanity. 
The  two  most  celebrated  cases,  among  those 
collected  by  Mr.  Baring-Gould,  are  those  of 
the  Marechal  de  Retz,  in  1440,  and  of  Eliza- 
beth, a  Hungarian  countess,  in  the  seventeenth 
century.  The  Countess  Elizabeth  enticed  young 
girls  into  her  palace  on  divers  pretexts,  and  then 
coolly  murdered  them,  for  the  purpose  of  bath- 
ing in  their  blood.  The  spectacle  of  human 
suffering  became  at  last  such  a  delight  to  her 
that  she  would  apply  with  her  own  hands  the 
most  excruciating  tortures,  relishing  the  shrieks 
of  her  victims  as  the  epicure  relishes  each  sip 
of  his  old  Chateau  Margaux.  In  this  way  she 
is  said  to  have  murdered  six  hundred  and  fifty 
persons  before  her  evil  career  was  brought  to 
an  end ;  though,  when  one  recollects  the  fa- 
mous men  in  buckram  and  the  notorious  trio 
of  crows,  one  is  inclined  to  strike  off  a  cipher, 
and  regard  sixty-five  as  a  sufficiently  imposing 
and  far  less  improbable  number.  But  the  case 
of  the  Marechal  de  Retz  is  still  more  frightful. 
A  marshal  of  France,  a  scholarly  man,  a  patriot, 
and  a  man  of  holy  life,  he  became  suddenly 
possessed  by  an  uncontrollable  desire  to  murder 
children.  During  seven  years  he  continued  to 
inveigle  little  boys  and  girls  into  his  castle,  at 
the  rate  of  about  two  each  week^  (?)  and  then 
no 


WEREWOLVES  AND  SWAN-MAIDENS 

put  them  to  death  in  various  ways,  that  he 
might  witness  their  agonies  and  bathe  in  their 
blood ;  experiencing  after  each  occasion  the 
most  dreadful  remorse,  but  led  on  by  an  irre- 
sistible craving  to  repeat  the  crime.  When  this 
unparalleled  iniquity  was  finally  brought  to 
light,  the  castle  was  found  to  contain  bins  full 
of  children's  bones.  The  horrible  details  of  the 
trial  are  to  be  found  in  the  histories  of  France 
by  Michelet  and  Martin. 

Going  a  step  further,  we  find  cases  in  which 
the  propensity  to  murder  has  been  accompanied 
by  cannibalism.  In  1598  a  tailor  of  Chalons 
was  sentenced  by  the  parliament  of  Paris  to  be 
burned  alive  for  lycanthropy.  "  This  wretched 
man  had  decoyed  children  into  his  shop,  or  at- 
tacked them  in  the  gloaming  when  they  strayed 
in  the  woods,  had  torn  them  with  his  teeth  and 
killed  them,  after  which  he  seems  calmly  to  have 
dressed  their  flesh  as  ordinary  meat,  and  to 
have  eaten  it  with  a  great  relish.  The  number 
of  little  innocents  whom  he  destroyed  is  un- 
known. A  whole  caskful  of  bones  was  discov- 
ered in  his  house."1  About  1850  a  beggar  in 
the  village  of  Polomyia,  in  Galicia,  was  proved 
to  have  killed  and  eaten  fourteen  children.  A 
house  had  one  day  caught  fire  and  burnt  to  the 
ground,  roasting  one  of  the  inmates,  who  was 
unable  to  escape.  The  beggar  passed  by  soon 
1  Baring-Gould,  Werewolves,  p.  81. 
Ill 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

after,  and,  as  he  was  suffering  from  excessive 
hunger,  could  not  resist  the  temptation  of  mak- 
ing a  meal  off  the  charred  body.  From  that 
moment  he  was  tormented  by  a  craving  for 
human  flesh.  He  met  a  little  orphan  girl,  about 
nine  years  old,  and  giving  her  a  pinchbeck  ring 
told  her  to  seek  for  others  like  it  under  a  tree 
in  the  neighbouring  wood.  She  was  slain,  car- 
ried to  the  beggar's  hovel,  and  eaten.  In  the 
course  of  three  years  thirteen  other  children 
mysteriously  disappeared,  but  no  one  knew 
whom  to  suspect.  At  last  an  innkeeper  missed 
a  pair  of  ducks,  and  having  no  good  opinion  of 
this  beggar's  honesty,  went  unexpectedly  to  his 
cabin,  burst  suddenly  in  at  the  door,  and  to  his 
horror  found  him  in  the  act  of  hiding  under 
his  cloak  a  severed  head ;  a  bowl  of  fresh  blood 
stood  under  the  oven,  and  pieces  of  a  thigh 
were  cooking  over  the  fire.1 

This  occurred  only  about  twenty  years  ago, 
and  the  criminal,  though  ruled  by  an  insane  ap- 
petite, is  not  known  to  have  been  subject  to  any 
mental  delusion.  But  there  have  been  a  great 
many  similar  cases,  in  which  the  homicidal  or 
cannibal  craving  has  been  accompanied  by  gen- 
uine hallucination.  Forms  of  insanity  in  which 
the  afflicted  persons  imagine  themselves  to  be 
brute  animals  are  not  perhaps  very  common, 
but  they  are  not  unknown.  I  once  knew  a  poor 
1  Baring-Gould,  op.  fit.  chap.  xiv. 
112 


WEREWOLVES  AND  SWAN-MAIDENS 

demented  old  man  who  believed  himself  to  be 
a  horse,  and  would  stand  by  the  hour  together 
before  a  manger,  nibbling  hay,  or  deluding  him- 
self with  the  pretence  of  so  doing.  Many  of 
the  cannibals  whose  cases  are  related  by  Mr. 
Baring-Gould,  in  his  chapter  of  horrors,  actually 
believed  themselves  to  have  been  transformed 
into  wolves  or  other  wild  animals.  Jean  Gre- 
nier  was  a  boy  of  thirteen,  partially  idiotic,  and 
of  strongly  marked  canine  physiognomy  ;  his 
jaws  were  large  and  projected  forward,  and  his 
canine  teeth  were  unnaturally  long,  so  as  to 
protrude  beyond  the  lower  lip.  He  believed 
himself  to  be  a  werewolf.  One  evening,  meet- 
ing half  a  dozen  young  girls,  he  scared  them 
out  of  their  wits  by  telling  them  that  as  soon  as 
the  sun  had  set  he  would  turn  into  a  wolf  and 
eat  them  for  supper.  A  few  days  later,  one 
little  girl,  having  gone  out  at  nightfall  to  look 
after  the  sheep,  was  attacked  by  some  creature 
which  in  her  terror  she  mistook  for  a  wolf,  but 
which  afterward  proved  to  be  none  other  than 
Jean  Grenier.  She  beat  him  off  with  her  sheep- 
staff,  and  fled  home.  As  several  children  had 
mysteriously  disappeared  from  the  neighbour- 
hood, Grenier  was  at  once  suspected.  Being 
brought  before  the  parliament  of  Bordeaux,  he 
stated  that  two  years  ago  he  had  met  the  Devil 
one  night  in  the  woods  and  had  signed  a  com- 
pact with  him  and  received  from  him  a  wolfskin. 
"3 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

Since  then  he  had  roamed  about  as  a  wolf  after 
dark,  resuming  his  human  shape  by  daylight. 
He  had  killed  and  eaten  several  children  whom 
he  had  found  alone  in  the  fields,  and  on  one 
occasion  he  had  entered  a  house  while  the  fam- 
ily were  out  and  taken  the  baby  from  its  cra- 
dle. A  careful  investigation  proved  the  truth 
of  these  statements,  so  far  as  the  cannibalism 
was  concerned.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  miss- 
ing children  were  eaten  by  Jean  Grenier,  and 
there  is  no  doubt  that  in  his  own  mind  the  half- 
witted boy  was  firmly  convinced  that  he  was 
a  wolf.  Here  the  lycanthropy  was  complete. 

In  the  year  1598,  "in  a  wild  and  unfre- 
quented spot  near  Caude,  some  countrymen 
came  one  day  upon  the  corpse  of  a  boy  of  fif- 
teen, horribly  mutilated  and  bespattered  with 
blood.  As  the  men  approached,  two  wolves, 
which  had  been  rending  the  body,  bounded 
away  into  the  thicket.  The  men  gave  chase  im- 
mediately, following  their  bloody  tracks  till  they 
lost  them ;  when,  suddenly  crouching  among 
the  bushes,  his  teeth  chattering  with  fear,  they 
found  a  man  half  naked,  with  long  hair  and 
beard,  and  with  his  hands  dyed  in  blood.  His 
nails  were  long  as  claws,  and  were  clotted  with 
fresh  gore  and  shreds  of  human  flesh."  1 

This  man,  Jacques  Roulet,  was  a  poor,  half- 
witted creature  under  the  dominion  of  a  can- 
1  Baring-Gould,  op.  fit.  p.  82. 
114 


WEREWOLVES  AND  SWAN-MAIDENS 

nibal  appetite.  He  was  employed  in  tearing  to 
pieces  the  corpse  of  the  boy  when  these  country- 
men came  up.  Whether  there  were  any  wolves 
in  the  case,  except  what  the  excited  imaginations 
of  the  men  may  have  conjured  up,  I  will  not 
presume  to  determine ;  but  it  is  certain  that 
Roulet  supposed  himself  to  be  a  wolf,  and  killed 
and  ate  several  persons  under  the  influence  of 
the  delusion.  He  was  sentenced  to  death,  but 
the  parliament  of  Paris  reversed  the  sentence, 
and  charitably  shut  him  up  in  a  madhouse. 

The  annals  of  the  Middle  Ages  furnish  many 
cases  similar  to  these  of  Grenier  and  Roulet. 
Their  share  in  maintaining  the  werewolf  super- 
stition is  undeniable ;  but  modern  science  finds 
in  them  nothing  that  cannot  be  readily  ex- 
plained. That  stupendous  process  of  breeding, 
which  we  call  civilization,  has  been  for  long 
ages  strengthening  those  kindly  social  feelings 
by  the  possession  of  which  we  are  chiefly  dis- 
tinguished from  the  brutes,  leaving  our  primi- 
tive bestial  impulses  to  die  for  want  of  exercise, 
or  checking  in  every  possible  way  their  further 
expansion  by  legislative  enactments.  But  this 
process,  which  is  transforming  us  from  savages 
into  civilized  men,  is  a  very  slow  one ;  and  now 
and  then  there  occur  cases  of  what  physiologists 
call  atavism,  or  reversion  to  an  ancestral  type 
of  character.  Now  and  then  persons  are  born, 
in  civilized  countries,  whose  intellectual  powers 
"5 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

are  on  a  level  with  those  of  the  most  degraded 
Australian  savage,  and  these  we  call  idiots.  And 
now  and  then  persons  are  born  possessed  of  the 
bestial  appetites  and  cravings  of  primitive  man, 
his  fiendish  cruelty  and  his  liking  for  human 
flesh.  Modern  physiology  knows  how  to  clas- 
sify and  explain  these  abnormal  cases,  but  to 
the  unscientific  mediasval  mind  they  were  ex- 
plicable only  on  the  hypothesis  of  a  diabolical 
metamorphosis.  And  there  is  nothing  strange 
in  the  fact  that,  in  an  age  when  the  prevailing 
habits  of  thought  rendered  the  transformation 
of  men  into  beasts  an  easily  admissible  notion, 
these  monsters  of  cruelty  and  depraved  appetite 
should  have  been  regarded  as  capable  of  tak- 
ing on  bestial  forms.  Nor  is  it  strange  that  the 
hallucination  under  which  these  unfortunate 
wretches  laboured  should  have  taken  such  a 
shape  as  to  account  to  their  feeble  intelligence 
for  the  existence  of  the  appetites  which  they 
were  conscious  of  not  sharing  with  their  neigh- 
bours and  contemporaries.  If  a  myth  is  a  piece 
of  unscientific  philosophizing,  it  must  some- 
times be  applied  to  the  explanation  of  obscure 
psychological  as  well  as  of  physical  phenomena. 
Where  the  modern  calmly  taps  his  forehead  and 
says,  "  Arrested  development,"  the  terrified  an- 
cient made  the  sign  of  the  cross  and  cried, 
"  Werewolf." 


116 


WEREWOLVES  AND  SWAN-MAIDENS 

We  shall  be  assisted  in  this  explanation  by 
turning  aside  for  a  moment  to  examine  the 
wild  superstitions  about  "changelings,"  which 
contributed,  along  with  so  many  others,  to  make 
the  lives  of  our  ancestors  anxious  and  miserable. 
These  superstitions  were  for  the  most  part  at- 
tempts to  explain  the  phenomena  of  insanity, 
epilepsy,  and  other  obscure  nervous  diseases. 
A  man  who  has  hitherto  enjoyed  perfect  health, 
and  whose  actions  have  been  consistent  and 
rational,  suddenly  loses  all  self-control  and 
seems  actuated  by  a  will  foreign  to  himself. 
Modern  science  possesses  the  key  to  this  phe- 
nomenon ;  but  in  former  times  it  was  explicable 
only  on  the  hypothesis  that  a  demon  had  en- 
tered the  body  of  the  lunatic,  or  else  that  the 
fairies  had  stolen  the  real  man  and  substituted 
for  him  a  diabolical  phantom  exactly  like  him 
in  stature  and  features.  Hence  the  numerous 
legends  of  changelings,  some  of  which  are  very 
curious.  In  Irish  folk-lore  we  find  the  story  of 
one  Rickard,  surnamed  the  Rake,  from  his 
worthless  character.  A  good-natured,  idle  fel- 
low, he  spent  all  his  evenings  in  dancing,  —  an 
accomplishment  in  which  no  one  in  the  village 
could  rival  him.  One  night,  in  the  midst  of  a 
lively  reel,  he  fell  down  in  a  fit.  "  He  's  struck 
with  a  fairy  dart,"  exclaimed  all  the  friends,  and 
they  carried  him  home  and  nursed  him  ;  but 


117 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

his  face  grew  so  thin  and  his  manner  so  morose 
that  by  and  by  all  began  to  suspect  that  the 
true  Rickard  was  gone  and  a  changeling  put  in 
his  place.  Rickard,  with  all  his  accomplish- 
ments, was  no  musician  ;  and  so,  in  order  to  put 
the  matter  to  a  crucial  test,  a  bagpipe  was  left 
in  the  room  by  the  side  of  his  bed.  The  trick 
succeeded.  One  hot  summer's  day,  when  all 
were  supposed  to  be  in  the  field  making  hay, 
some  members  of  the  family  secreted  in  a  clothes- 
press  saw  the  bedroom  door  open  a  little  way, 
and  a  lean,  foxy  face,  with  a  pair  of  deep-sunken 
eyes,  peer  anxiously  about  the  premises.  Hav- 
ing satisfied  itself  that  the  coast  was  clear,  the 
face  withdrew,  the  door  was  closed,  and  pre- 
sently such  ravishing  strains  of  music  were  heard 
as  never  proceeded  from  a  bagpipe  before  or 
since  that  day.  Soon  was  heard  the  rustle  of  in- 
numerable fairies,  come  to  dance  to  the  change- 
ling's music.  Then  the  "  fairy-man  "  of  the  vil- 
lage, who  was  keeping  watch  with  the  family, 
heated  a  pair  of  tongs  red-hot,  and  with  deafen- 
ing shouts  all  burst  at  once  into  the  sick  cham- 
ber. The  music  had  ceased  and  the  room  was 
empty,  but  in  at  the  window  glared  a  fiendish 
face,  with  such  fearful  looks  of  hatred,  that  for 
a  moment  all  stood  motionless  with  terror.  But 
when  the  fairy-man,  recovering  himself,  ad- 
vanced with  the  hot  tongs  to  pinch  its  nose,  it 
vanished  with  an  unearthly  yell,  and  there  on 
118 


WEREWOLVES  AND  SWAN-MAIDENS 

the  bed  was  Rickard,  safe  and  sound,  and  cured 
of  his  epilepsy.1 

Comparing  this  legend  with  numerous  others 
relating  to  changelings,  and  stripping  off  the 
fantastic  garb  of  fairy-lore  with  which  popular 
imagination  has  invested  them,  it  seems  impos- 
sible to  doubt  that  they  have  arisen  from  myths 
devised  for  the  purpose  of  explaining  the  ob- 
scure phenomena  of  mental  disease.  If  this  be 
so,  they  afford  an  excellent  collateral  illustra- 
tion of  the  belief  in  werewolves.  The  same 
mental  habits  which  led  men  to  regard  the 
insane  or  epileptic  person  as  a  changeling,  and 
which  allowed  them  to  explain  catalepsy  as  the 
temporary  departure  of  a  witch's  soul  from  its 
body,  would  enable  them  to  attribute  a  wolf's 
nature  to  the  maniac  or  idiot  with  cannibal  ap- 
petites. And  when  the  myth-forming  process 
had  got  thus  far,  it  would  not  stop  short  of 
assigning  to  the  unfortunate  wretch  a  tangible 
lupine  body;  for  all  ancient  mythology  teemed 
with  precedents  for  such  a  transformation. 

It  remains  for  us  to  sum  up,  —  to  tie  into  a 
bunch  the  keys  which  have  helped  us  to  pene- 
trate into  the  secret  causes  of  the  werewolf 
superstition.  In  a  previous  paper  we  saw  what 
a  host  of  myths,  fairy-tales,  and  superstitious 
observances  have  sprung  from  attempts  to  inter- 
pret one  simple  natural  phenomenon,  —  the 

1  Kennedy,  Fictions  of  the  Irish  Celts,  p.  90. 
119 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

descent  of  fire  from  the  clouds.  Here,  on  the 
other  hand,  we  see  what  a  heterogeneous  multi- 
tude of  mythical  elements  may  combine  to  build 
up  in  course  of  time  a  single  enormous  supersti- 
tion, and  we  see  how  curiously  fact  and  fancy 
have  cooperated  in  keeping  the  superstition  from 
falling.  In  the  first  place  the  worship  of  dead 
ancestors  with  wolf  totems  originated  the  notion 
of  the  transformation  of  men  into  divine  or 
superhuman  wolves ;  and  this  notion  was  con- 
firmed by  the  ambiguous  explanation  of  the 
storm-wind  as  the  rushing  of  a  troop  of  dead 
men's  souls  or  as  the  howling  of  wolf-like 
monsters.  Mediaeval  Christianity  retained  these 
conceptions,  merely  changing  the  superhuman 
wolves  into  evil  demons ;  and  finally  the  occur- 
rence of  cases  of  Berserker  madness  and  canni- 
balism, accompanied  by  lycanthropic  hallucina- 
tions, being  interpreted  as  due  to  such  demo- 
niacal metamorphosis,  gave  rise  to  the  werewolf 
superstition  of  the  Middle  Ages.  The  etymo- 
logical proceedings,  to  which  Mr.  Cox  would 
incontinently  ascribe  the  origin  of  the  entire 
superstition,  seemed  to  me  to  have  played  a 
very  subordinate  part  in  the  matter.  To  suppose 
that  Jean  Grenier  imagined  himself  to  be  a  wolf, 
because  the  Greek  word  for  wolf  sounded  like 
the  word  for  light,  and  thus  gave  rise  to  the 
story  of  a  light  deity  who  became  a  wolf,  seems 
to  me  quite  inadmissible.  Yet  as  far  as  such 
120 


WEREWOLVES  AND  SWAN-MAIDENS 

verbal  equivocations  may  have  prevailed,  they 
doubtless  helped  to  sustain  the  delusion. 

Thus  we  need  no  longer  regard  our  werewolf 
as  an  inexplicable  creature  of  undetermined 
pedigree.  But  any  account  of  him  would  be 
quite  imperfect  which  should  omit  all  consider- 
ation of  the  methods  by  which  his  change  of 
form  was  accomplished.  By  the  ancient  Ro- 
mans the  werewolf  was  commonly  called  a  "skin- 
changer  "  or  "  turn-coat "  (versipellis),  and  sim- 
ilar epithets  were  applied  to  him  in  the  Middle 
Ages.  The  mediaeval  theory  was  that,  while  the 
werewolf  kept  his  human  form,  his  hair  grew 
inwards;  when  he  wished  to  become  a  wolf, 
he  simply  turned  himself  inside  out.  In  many 
trials  on  record,  the  prisoners  were  closely  in- 
terrogated as  to  how  this  inversion  might  be 
accomplished  ;  but  I  am  not  aware  that  any  one 
of  them  ever  gave  a  satisfactory  answer.  At  the 
moment  of  change  their  memories  seem  to  have 
become  temporarily  befogged.  Now  and  then 
a  poor  wretch  had  his  arms  and  legs  cut  off,  or 
was  partially  flayed,  in  order  that  the  ingrowing 
hair  might  be  detected.1  Another  theory  was, 

1  "  En  1541,  a  Padoue,  dit  Wier,  un  homme  qui  se 
croyait  change  en  loup  courait  la  campagne,  attaquant  et  met- 
tant  a  mort  ceux  qu'il  rencontrait.  Apres  bien  des  difficultes, 
on  parvint  s'emparer  de  lui.  II  dit  en  confidence  a  ceux 
qui  1'arreterent  :  Je  suis  vraiment  un  loup,  et  si  ma  peau  ne 
parait  pas  etre  celle  d'un  loup,  c'est  parce  qu'elle  est  retour- 
121 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

that  the  possessed  person  had  merely  to  put  on 
a  wolf's  skin,  in  order  to  assume  instantly  the 
lupine  form  and  character ;  and  in  this  may  per- 
haps be  seen  a  vague  reminiscence  of  the  alleged 
fact  that  Berserkers  were  in  the  habit  of  haunt- 
ing the  woods  by  night,  clothed  in  the  hides 
of  wolves  or  bears.1  Such  a  wolfskin  was  kept 
by  the  boy  Grenier.  Roulet,  on  the  other  hand, 
confessed  to  using  a  magic  salve  or  ointment. 
A  fourth  method  of  becoming  a  werewolf  was 
to  obtain  a  girdle,  usually  made  of  human  skin. 
Several  cases  are  related  in  Thorpe's  "  North- 
ern Mythology."  One  hot  day  in  harvest-time 

nee  et  que  les  poils  sont  en  dedans.  —  Pour  s' assurer  du  fait, 
on  coupa  le  malheureux  aux  differentes  parties  du  corps,  on 
lui  emporta  les  bras  et  les  jambes."  Taine,  De  I* Intelli- 
gence, torn.  ii.  p.  203.  See  the  account  of  Slavonic  were- 
wolves in  Ralston,  Songs  of  the  Russian  People,  pp.  404- 
418. 

1  Mr.  Cox,  whose  scepticism  on  obscure  points  in  history 
rather  surpasses  that  of  Sir  G.  C.  Lewis,  dismisses  with  a 
sneer  the  subject  of  the  Berserker  madness,  observing  that 
«« the  unanimous  testimony  of  the  Norse  historians  is  worth  as 
much  and  as  little  as  the  convictions  of  Glanvil  and  Hale  on 
the  reality  of  witchcraft."  I  have  not  the  special  knowledge 
requisite  for  pronouncing  an  opinion  on  this  point,  but  Mr. 
Cox's  ordinary  methods  of  disposing  of  such  questions  are  not 
such  as  to  make  one  feel  obliged  to  accept  his  bare  assertion, 
unaccompanied  by  critical  arguments.  The  madness  of  the 
bearsarks  may,  no  doubt,  be  the  same  thing  as  the  frenzy 
of  Herakles ;  but  something  more  than  mere  dogmatism  is 
needed  to  prove  it. 

122 


WEREWOLVES  AND  SWAN-MAIDENS 

some  reapers  lay  down  to  sleep  in  the  shade ; 
when  one  of  them,  who  could  not  sleep,  saw 
the  man  next  him  arise  quietly  and  gird  him 
with  a  strap,  whereupon  he  instantly  vanished, 
and  a  wolf  jumped  up  from  among  the  sleepers 
and  ran  off  across  the  fields.  Another  man,  who 
possessed  such  a  girdle,  once  went  away  from 
home  without  remembering  to  lock  it  up.  His 
little  son  climbed  up  to  the  cupboard  and  got 
it,  and  as  he  proceeded  to  buckle  it  around  his 
waist  he  became  instantly  transformed  into  a 
strange-looking  beast,  just  then  his  father 
came  in,  and  seizing  the  girdle  restored  the 
child  to  his  natural  shape.  The  boy  said  that 
no  sooner  had  he  buckled  it  on  than  he  was 
tormented  with  a  raging  hunger. 

Sometimes  the  werewolf  transformation  led 
to  unlucky  accidents.  At  Caseburg,  as  a  man 
and  his  wife  were  making  hay,  the  woman  threw 
down  her  pitchfork  and  went  away,  telling  her 
husband  that  if  a  wild  beast  should  come  to 
him  during  her  absence  he  must  throw  his  hat 
at  it.  Presently  a  she-wolf  rushed  toward  him. 
The  man  threw  his  hat  at  it,  but  a  boy  came  up 
from  another  part  of  the  field  and  stabbed  the 
animal  with  his  pitchfork,  whereupon  it  van- 
ished, and  the  woman's  dead  body  lay  at  his  feet. 

A  parallel  legend  shows  that  this  woman 
wished  to  have  the  hat  thrown  at  her,  in  order 
that  she  might  be  henceforth  free  from  her  Ha- 
123 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

bility  to  become  a  werewolf.  A  man  was  one 
night  returning  with  his  wife  from  a  merry- 
making when  he  felt  the  change  coming  on. 
Giving  his  wife  the  reins,  he  jumped  from  the 
wagon,  telling  her  to  strike  with  her  apron  at 
any  animal  which  might  come  to  her.  In  a  few 
moments  a  wolf  ran  up  to  the  side  of  the  ve- 
hicle, and,  as  the  woman  struck  out  with  her 
apron,  it  bit  off  a  piece  and  ran  away.  Pre- 
sently the  man  returned  with  the  piece  of  apron 
in  his  mouth,  and  consoled  his  terrified  wife 
with  the  information  that  the  enchantment  had 
left  him  forever. 

A  terrible  case  at  a  village  in  Auvergne  has 
found  its  way  into  the  annals  of  witchcraft.  "  A 
gentleman  while  hunting  was  suddenly  attacked 
by  a  savage  wolf  of  monstrous  size.  Impene- 
trable by  his  shot,  the  beast  made  a  spring  upon 
the  helpless  huntsman,  who  in  the  struggle 
luckily,  or  unluckily  for  the  unfortunate  lady, 
contrived  to  cut  off  one  of  its  fore-paws.  This 
trophy  he  placed  in  his  pocket,  and  made  the 
best  of  his  way  homewards  in  safety.  On  the 
road  he  met  a  friend,  to  whom  he  exhibited  a 
bleeding  paw,  or  rather  (as  it  now  appeared)  a 
woman's  hand,  upon  which  was  a  wedding-ring. 
His  wife's  ring  was  at  once  recognized  by  the 
other.  His  suspicions  aroused,  he  immediately 
went  in  search  of  his  wife,  who  was  found  sit- 
ting by  the  fire  in  the  kitchen,  her  arm  hidden 
124 


WEREWOLVES  AND  SWAN-MAIDENS 

beneath  her  apron,  when  the  husband,  seizing 
her  by  the  arm,  found  his  terrible  suspicions 
verified.  The  bleeding  stump  was  there,  evi- 
dently just  fresh  from  the  wound.  She  was 
given  into  custody,  and  in  the  event  was  burned 
at  Riom,  in  presence  of  thousands  of  spec- 
tators." 1 

Sometimes  a  werewolf  was  cured  merely  by 
recognizing  him  while  in  his  brute  shape.  A 
Swedish  legend  tells  of  a  cottager  who,  on  en- 
tering the  forest  one  day  without  recollecting 
to  say  his  Pater  Noster,  got  into  the  power  of 
a  Troll,  who  changed  him  into  a  wolf.  For 
many  years  his  wife  mourned  him  as  dead.  But 
one  Christmas  eve  the  old  Troll,  disguised  as 
a  beggar-woman,  came  to  the  house  for  alms ; 
and  being  taken  in  and  kindly  treated,  told  the 
woman  that  her  husband  might  very  likely  ap- 
pear to  her  in  wolf  shape.  Going  at  night  to 
the  pantry  to  lay  aside  a  joint  of  meat  for  to- 
morrow's dinner,  she  saw  a  wolf  standing  with 
its  paws  on  the  window-sill,  looking  wistfully 

1  Williams,  Superstitions  of  Witchcraft,  p.  179.  See  a 
parallel  case  of  a  cat-woman,  in  Thorpe's  Northern  Mytho- 
logy, ii.  26.  "Certain  witches  at  Thurso  for  a  long  rime 
tormented  an  honest  fellow  under  the  usual  form  of  cats,  till 
one  night  he  put  them  to  flight  with  his  broadsword,  and  cut 
off  the  leg  of  one  less  nimble  than  the  rest  ;  taking  it  up,  to 
his  amazement  he  found  it  to  be  a  woman's  leg,  and  next 
morning  he  discovered  the  old  hag  its  owner  with  but  one  leg 
left."  Tylor,  Primitive  Culture,  i.  283. 
125 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

in  at  her.  "  Ah,  dearest,"  said  she,  "  if  I  knew 
that  thou  wert  really  my  husband,  I  would  give 
thee  a  bone."  Whereupon  the  wolfskin  fell 
off,  and  her  husband  stood  before  her  in  the 
same  old  clothes  which  he  had  on  the  day  that 
the  Troll  got  hold  of  him. 

In  Denmark  it  was  believed  that  if  a  woman 
were  to  creep  through  a  colt's  placental  mem- 
brane stretched  between  four  sticks,  she  would 
for  the  rest  of  her  life  bring  forth  children  with- 
out pain  or  illness ;  but  all  the  boys  would  in 
such  cases  be  werewolves,  and  all  the  girls 
Maras,  or  nightmares.  In  this  grotesque  super- 
stition appears  that  curious  kinship  between 
the  werewolf  and  the  wife  or  maiden  of  super- 
natural race,  which  serves  admirably  to  illus- 
trate the  nature  of  both  conceptions,  and  the 
elucidation  of  which  shall  occupy  us  through- 
out the  remainder  of  this  paper. 

It  is,  perhaps,  needless  to  state  that  in  the 
personality  of  the  nightmare,  or  Mara,  there 
was  nothing  equine.  The  Mara  was  a  female 
demon,1  who  would  come  at  night  and  torment 
men  or  women  by  crouching  on  their  chests  or 
stomachs  and  stopping  their  respiration.  The 
scene  is  well  enough  represented  in  Fuseli's 
picture,  though  the  frenzied-looking  horse  which 

1  "  The  mare  in  nightmare  means  spirit,  elf,  or  nymph; 
compare    Anglo-Saxon  wudumare  (wood-mare)  =:  echo." 
Tylor,  Primitive  Culture,  vol.  ii.  p.  173. 
126 


WEREWOLVES  AND  SWAN-MAIDENS 

there  accompanies  the  demon  has  no  place  in 
the  original  superstition.  A  Netherlandish  story 
illustrates  the  character  of  the  Mara.  Two 
young  men  were  in  love  with  the  same  damsel. 
One  of  them,  being  tormented  every  night  by 
a  Mara,  sought  advice  from  his  rival,  and  it  was 
a  treacherous  counsel  that  he  got.  "  Hold  a 
sharp  knife  with  a  point  towards  your  breast, 
and  you  '11  never  see  the  Mara  again,"  said  this 
false  friend.  The  lad  thanked  him,  but  when 
he  lay  down  to  rest  he  thought  it  as  well  to  be 
on  the  safe  side,  and  so  held  the  knife  han- 
dle downward.  So  when  the  Mara  came,  in- 
stead of  forcing  the  blade  into  his  breast,  she 
cut  herself  badly,  and  fled  howling ;  and  let  us 
hope,  though  the  legend  here  leaves  us  in  the 
dark,  that  this  poor  youth,  who  is  said  to  have 
been  the  comelier  of  the  two,  revenged  himself 
on  his  malicious  rival  by  marrying  the  young 
lady. 

But  the  Mara  sometimes  appeared  in  less 
revolting  shape,  and  became  the  mistress  or 
even  the  wife  of  some  mortal  man  to  whom  she 
happened  to  take  a  fancy.  In  such  cases  she 
would  vanish  on  being  recognized.  There  is  a 
well-told  monkish  tale  of  a  pious  knight  who, 
journeying  one  day  through  the  forest,  found 
a  beautiful  lady  stripped  naked  and  tied  to  a 
tree,  her  back  all  covered  with  deep  gashes, 
streaming  with  blood,  from  a  flogging  which 
127 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

some  bandits  had  given  her.  Of  course  he  took 
her  home  to  his  castle  and  married  her,  and  for 
a  while  they  lived  very  happily  together,  and 
the  fame  of  the  lady's  beauty  was  so  great  that 
kings  and  emperors  held  tournaments  in  honour 
of  her.  But  this  pious  knight  used  to  go  to 
mass  every  Sunday,  and  greatly  was  he  scandal- 
ized when  he  found  that  his  wife  would  never 
stay  to  assist  in  the  Credo,  but  would  always  get 
up  and  walk  out  of  chur.chjust  as  the  choir  struck 
up.  All  her  husband's  coaxing  was  of  no  use ; 
threats  and  entreaties  were  alike  powerless  even  to 
elicit  an  explanation  of  this  strange  conduct.  At 
last  the  good  man  determined  to  use  force ;  and 
so  one  Sunday,  as  the  lady  got  up  to  go  out, 
according  to  custom,  he  seized  her  by  the  arm 
and  sternly  commanded  her  to  remain.  Her 
whole  frame  was  suddenly  convulsed,  and  her 
dark  eyes  gleamed  with  weird,  unearthly  bril- 
liancy. The  services  paused  for  a  moment,  and 
all  eyes  were  turned  toward  the  knight  and  his 
lady.  "In  God's  name,  tell  me  what  thouart," 
shouted  the  knight ;  and  instantly,  says  the 
chronicler,  "  the  bodily  form  of  the  lady  melted 
away,  and  was  seen  no  more  ;  whilst,  with  a 
cry  of  anguish  and  of  terror,  an  evil  spirit  of 
monstrous  form  rose  from  the  ground,  clave 
the  chapel  roof  asunder,  and  disappeared  in  the 
air." 

In  a  Danish  legend,  the  Mara  betrays  her 
128 


WEREWOLVES  AND  SWAN-MAIDENS 

affinity  to  the  Nixies,  or  Swan-maidens.  A 
peasant  discovered  that  his  sweetheart  was  in 
the  habit  of  coming  to  him  by  night  as  a  Mara. 
He  kept  strict  watch  until  he  discovered  her 
creeping  into  the  room  through  a  small  knot- 
hole in  the  door.  Next  day  he  made  a  peg,  and 
after  she  had  come  to  him  drove  in  the  peg  so 
that  she  was  unable  to  escape.  They  were  mar- 
ried and  lived  together  many  years  ;  but  one 
night  it  happened  that  the  man,  joking  with  his 
wife  about  the  way  in  which  he  had  secured 
her,  drew  the  peg  from  the  knot-hole,  that  she 
might  see  how  she  had  entered  his  room.  As 
she  peeped  through,  she  became  suddenly  quite 
small,  passed  out,  and  was  never  seen  again. 

The  well-known  pathological  phenomena  of 
nightmare  are  sufficient  to  account  for  the  me- 
diaeval theory  of  a  fiend  who  sits  upon  one's 
bosom  and  hinders  respiration  ;  but  as  we  com- 
pare these  various  legends  relating  to  the  Mara, 
we  see  that  a  more  recondite  explanation  is 
needed  to  account  for  all  her  peculiarities.  In- 
digestion may  interfere  with  our  breathing,  but 
it  does  not  make  beautiful  women  crawl  through 
keyholes,  nor  does  it  bring  wives  from  the 
spirit  world.  The  Mara  belongs  to  an  ancient 
family,  and  in  passing  from  the  regions  of 
monkish  superstition  to  those  of  pure  mytho- 
logy we  find  that,  like  her  kinsman  the  were- 
wolf, she  had  once  seen  better  days.  Chris  tian- 
129 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

ity  made  a  demon  of  the  Mara,  and  adopted  the 
theory  that  Satan  employed  these  seductive 
creatures  as  agents  for  ruining  human  souls. 
Such  is  the  character  of  the  knight's  wife,  in  the 
monkish  legend  just  cited.  But  in  the  Danish 
tale  the  Mara  appears  as  one  of  that  large  fam- 
ily of  supernatural  wives  who  are  permitted  to 
live  with  mortal  men  under  certain  conditions, 
but  who  are  compelled  to  flee  away  when  these 
conditions  are  broken,  as  is  always  sure  to  be 
the  case.  The  eldest  and  one  of  the  loveliest 
of  this  family  is  the  Hindu  nymph  Urvasi, 
whose  love  adventures  with  Pururavas  are  nar- 
rated in  the  Puranas,  and  form  the  subject  of 
the  well-known  and  exquisite  Sanskrit  drama 
by  Kalidasa.  Urvasi  is  allowed  to  live  with 
Pururavas  so  long  as  she  does  not  see  him, 
undressed.  But  one  night  her  kinsmen,  the 
Gandharvas,  or  cloud-demons,  vexed  at  her  long 
absence  from  heaven,  resolved  to  get  her  away 
from  her  mortal  companion.  They  stole  a  pet 
lamb  which  had  been  tied  at  the  foot  of  her 
couch,  whereat  she  bitterly  upbraided  her  hus- 
band. In  rage  and  mortification,  Pururavas 
sprang  up  without  throwing  on  his  tunic,  and 
grasping  his  sword  sought  the  robber.  Then 
the  wicked  Gandharvas  sent  a  flash  of  lightning, 
and  Urvasi,  seeing  her  naked  husband,  instantly 
vanished. 

The  different  versions  of  this  legend,  which 
130 


WEREWOLVES  AND  SWAN-MAIDENS 

have  been  elaborately  analyzed  by  comparative 
mythologists,  leave  no  doubt  that  Urvasi  is 
one  of  the  dawn-nymphs  or  bright  fleecy  clouds 
of  early  morning,  which  vanish  as  the  splendour 
of  the  sun  is  unveiled.  We  saw,  in  the  preced- 
ing paper,  that  the  ancient  Aryans  regarded  the 
sky  as  a  sea  or  great  lake,  and  that  the  clouds 
were  explained  variously  as  Phaiakian  ships 
with  birdlike  beaks  sailing  over  this  lake,  or 
as  bright  birds  of  divers  shapes  and  hues.  The 
light  fleecy  cirrhi  were  regarded  as  mermaids, 
or  as  swans,  or  as  maidens  with  swan's  plu- 
mage. In  Sanskrit  they  are  called  Apsaras,  or 
"those who  move  in  the  water,"  and  the  Elves 
and  Maras  of  Teutonic  mythology  have  the 
same  significance.  Urvasi  appears  in  one  le- 
gend as  a  bird  ;  and  a  South  German  prescrip- 
tion for  getting  rid  of  the  Mara  asserts  that  if 
she  be  wrapped  up  in  the  bedclothes  and  firmly 
held,  a  white  dove  will  forthwith  fly  from  the 
room,  leaving  the  bedclothes  empty.1 

In  the  story  of  Melusina  the  cloud-maiden 
appears  as  a  kind  of  mermaid,  but  in  other 
respects  the  legend  resembles  that  of  Urvasi. 
Raymond,  Count  de  la  Foret,  of  Poitou,  having 
by  an  accident  killed  his  patron  and  benefactor 
during  a  hunting  excursion,  fled  in  terror  and 

1  See   Kuhn,    Herabkunft   des   Fetters,   p.  91  ;    Weber, 
In  disc  he    Studien,    i.  197;    Wolf,  Eeitr  age   zur  deutschen 
ie,  ii.  233-281  ;   Miiller,  Chips,  ii.  114-128. 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

despair  into  the  deep  recesses  of  the  forest.  All 
the  afternoon  and  evening  he  wandered  through 
the  thick  dark  woods,  until  at  midnight  he 
came  upon  a  strange  scene.  All  at  once  "  the 
boughs  of  the  trees  became  less  interlaced,  and 
the  trunks  fewer;  next  moment  his  horse, 
crashing  through  the  shrubs,  brought  him  out 
on  a  pleasant  glade,  white  with  rime,  and  illu- 
mined by  the  new  moon  ;  in  the  midst  bubbled 
up  a  limpid  fountain,  and  flowed  away  over  a 
pebbly  floor  with  a  soothing  murmur.  Near 
the  fountain-head  sat  three  maidens  in  glimmer- 
ing white  dresses,  with  long  waving  golden  hair, 
and  faces  of  inexpressible  beauty." l  One  of 
them  advanced  to  meet  Raymond,  and  accord- 
ing to  all  mythological  precedent,  they  were 
betrothed  before  daybreak.  In  due  time  the 
fountain-nymph  2  became  Countess  de  la  Foret, 
but  her  husband  was  given  to  understand  that 
all  her  Saturdays  would  be  passed  in  strictest 
seclusion,  upon  which  he  must  never  dare  to 
intrude,  under  penalty  of  losing  her  forever. 
For  many  years  all  went  well,  save  that  the 
fair  Melusina's  children  were,  without  excep- 
tion, misshapen  or  disfigured.  But  after  a  while 
this  strange  weekly  seclusion  got  bruited  about 

1  Baring-Gould,  Curious  Myths,  ii.  207. 

a  The  word  nymph  itself  means  "  cloud-maiden,"  as  is 
illustrated  by  the  kinship  between  the  Greek  vv^rj  and  the 
Latin  nubes. 

.    132 


WEREWOLVES  AND  SWAN-MAIDENS 

all  over  the  neighbourhood,  and  people  shook 
their  heads  and  looked  grave  about  it.  So  many 
gossiping  tales  came  to  the  Count's  ears,  that 
he  began  to  grow  anxious  and  suspicious,  and 
at  last  he  determined  to  know  the  worst.  He 
went  one  Saturday  to  Melusina's  private  apart- 
ments, and  going  through  one  empty  room  after 
another,  at  last  came  to  a  locked  door  which 
opened  into  a  bath  ;  looking  through  a  key- 
hole, there  he  saw  the  Countess  transformed 
from  the  waist  downwards  into  a  fish,  disport- 
ing herself  like  a  mermaid  in  the  water.  Of 
course  he  could  not  keep  the  secret,  but  when 
some  time  afterward  they  quarrelled,  must  needs 
address  her  as  "a  vile  serpent,  contaminator 
of  his  honourable  race."  So  she  disappeared 
through  the  window,  but  ever  afterward  hovered 
about  her  husband's  castle  of  Lusignan,  like  a 
Banshee,  whenever  one  of  its  lords  was  about 
to  die. 

The  well-known  story  of  Undine  is  similar 
to  that  of  Melusina,  save  that  the  naiad's  desire 
to  obtain  a  human  soul  is  a  conception  foreign 
to  the  spirit  of  the  myth,  and  marks  the  de- 
gradation which  Christianity  had  inflicted  upon 
the  denizens  of  fairyland.  In  one  of  Dasent's 
tales  the  water-maiden  is  replaced  by  a  kind  of 
werewolf.  A  white  bear  marries  a  young  girl, 
but  assumes  the  human  shape  at  night.  She  is 
never  to  look  upon  him  in  his  human  shape, 
'33 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

but  how  could  a  young  bride  be  expected  to 
obey  such  an  injunction  as  that  ?  She  lights  a 
candle  while  he  is  sleeping,  and  discovers  the 
handsomest  prince  in  the  world  ;  unluckily  she 
drops  tallow  on  his  shirt,  and  that  tells  the 
story.  But  she  is  more  fortunate  than  poor 
Raymond,  for  after  a  tiresome  journey  to  the 
"  land  east  of  the  sun  and  west  of  the  moon," 
and  an  arduous  washing-match  with  a  parcel  of 
ugly  Trolls,  she  washes  out  the  spots,  and  ends 
her  husband's  enchantment.1 

In  the  majority  of  these  legends,  however, 
the  Apsaras,  or  cloud-maiden,  has  a  shirt  of 
swan's  feathers  which  plays  the  same  part  as  the 
wolfskin  cape  or  girdle  of  the  werewolf.  If  you 
could  get  hold  of  a  werewolf's  sack  and  burn 
it,  a  permanent  cure  was  effected.  No  danger  of 
a  relapse,  unless  the  Devil  furnished  him  with 
a  new  wolfskin.  So  the  swan-maiden  kept  her 
human  form,  as  long  as  she  was  deprived  of 
her  tunic  of  feathers.  Indo-European  folk-lore 
teems  with  stories  of  swan-maidens  forcibly 
wooed  and  won  by  mortals  who  had  stolen  their 
clothes.  A  man  travelling  along  the  road  passes 
by  a  lake  where  several  lovely  girls  are  bathing ; 
their  dresses,  made  of  feathers  curiously  and 
daintily  woven,  lie  on  the  shore.  He  approaches 
the  place  cautiously  and  steals  one  of  these 

1  This  is  substantially  identical  with  the  stories  of  Beauty 
and  the  Beast,  Eros  and  Psyche,  Gandharba  Sena,  etc. 


WEREWOLVES  AND  SWAN-MAIDENS 

dresses.1  When  the  girls  have  finished  their 
bathing,  they  all  come  and  get  their  dresses  and 
swim  away  as  swans  ;  but  the  one  whose  dress 
is  stolen  must  needs  stay  on  shore  and  marry 
the  thief.  It  is  needless  to  add  that  they  live 
happily  together  for  many  years,  or  that  finally 
the  good  man  accidentally  leaves  the  cupboard 
door  unlocked,  whereupon  his  wife  gets  back 
her  swan-shirt  and  flies  away  from  him,  never  to 
return.  But  it  is  not  always  a  shirt  of  feathers. 
In  one  German  story,  a  nobleman  hunting  deer 
finds  a  maiden  bathing  in  a  clear  pool  in  the 
forest.  He  runs  stealthily  up  to  her  and  seizes 
her  necklace,  at  which  she  loses  the  power  to 
flee.  They  are  married,  and  she  bears  seven  sons 
at  once,  all  of  whom  have  gold  chains  about 
their  necks,  and  are  able  to  transform  them- 
selves into  swans  whenever  they  like.  A  Flem- 
ish legend  tells  of  three  Nixies,  or  water-sprites, 
who  came  out  of  the  Meuse  one  autumn  even- 
ing, and  helped  the  villagers  celebrate  the  end 
of  the  vintage.  Such  graceful  dancers  had  never 
been  seen  in  Flanders,  and  they  could  sing  as 
well  as  they  could  dance.  As  the  night  was 
warm,  one  of  them  took  ofF  her  gloves  and  gave 
them  to  her  partner  to  hold  for  her.  When  the 

1  The  feather  dress  reappears  in  the  Arabian  story  of  Has- 
san of  El-Basrah,  who  by  stealing  it  secures  possession  of  the 
Jinniya.  See  Lane's  Arabian  Nights ,  vol.  iii.  p  380. 
Ralston,  Songs  of  the  Russian  People,  p.  179. 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

clock  struck  twelve  the  other  two  started  off 
in  hot  haste,  and  then  there  was  a  hue  and  cry 
for  gloves.  The  lad  would  keep  them  as  love- 
tokens,  and  so  the  poor  Nixie  had  to  go  home 
without  them ;  but  she  must  have  died  on  the 
way,  for  next  morning  the  waters  of  the  Meuse 
were  blood-red,  and  those  damsels  never  re- 
turned. 

In  the  Faro  Islands  it  is  believed  that  seals 
cast  off  their  skins  every  ninth  night,  assume 
human  forms,  and  sing  and  dance  like  men  and 
women  until  daybreak,  when  they  resume  their 
skins  and  their  seal  natures.  Of  course  a  man 
once  found  and  hid  one  of  these  sealskins,  and 
so  got  a  mermaid  for  a  wife  ;  and  of  course  she 
recovered  the  skin  and  escaped.1  On  the  coasts 
of  Ireland  it  is  supposed  to  be  quite  an  ordinary 
thing  for  young  sea-fairies  to  get  human  hus- 
bands in  this  way  ;  the  brazen  things  even  come 
to  shore  on  purpose,  and  leave  their  red  caps 
lying  around  for  young  men  to  pick  up  ;  but  it 
behooves  the  husband  to  keep  a  strict  watch 
over  the  red  cap  if  he  would  not  see  his  chil- 
dren left  motherless. 

This  mermaid's  cap  has  contributed  its  quota 
to  the  superstitions  of  witchcraft.  An  Irish  story 
tells  how  Red  James  was  aroused  from  sleep 
one  night  by  noises  in  the  kitchen.  Going  down 

1  Thorpe,  Northern  Mythology,  iii.  173;  Kennedy,  Fic- 
tions of  the  Irish  Celts,  p.  123. 

136 


WEREWOLVES  AND  SWAN-MAIDENS 

to  the  door,  he  saw  a  lot  of  old  women  drinking 
punch  around  the  fireplace,  and  laughing  and 
joking  with  his  housekeeper.  When  the  punch- 
bowl was  empty,  they  all  put  on  red  caps,  and 
singing 

"  By  yarrow  and  rue, 
And  my  red  cap  too, 

Hie  me  over  to  England," 

they  flew  up  chimney.  So  Jimmy  burst  into 
the  room,  and  seized  the  housekeeper's  cap,  and 
went  along  with  them.  They  flew  across  the 
sea  to  a  castle  in  England,  passed  through  the 
keyholes  from  room  to  room  and  into  the  cel- 
lar, where  they  had  a  famous  carouse.  Unluck- 
ily, Jimmy,  being  unused  to  such  good  cheer,  got 
drunk,  and  forgot  to  put  on  his  cap  when  the 
others  did.  So  next  morning  the  lord's  butler 
found  him  dead-drunk  on  the  cellar  floor,  sur- 
rounded by  empty  casks.  He  was  sentenced  to 
be  hung  without  any  trial  worth  speaking  of; 
but  as  he  was  carted  to  the  gallows  an  old  woman 
cried  out,  "  Ach,  Jimmy  alanna  !  Would  you 
be  afther  dyin'  in  a  strange  land  without  your 
red  birredh  ? "  The  lord  made  no  objections, 
and  so  the  red  cap  was  brought  and  put  on  him. 
Accordingly  when  Jimmy  had  got  to  the  gal- 
lows and  was  making  his  last  speech  for  the 
edification  of  the  spectators,  he  unexpectedly 
and  somewhat  irrelevantly  exclaimed,  "  By  yar- 
row and  rue,"  etc.,  and  was  off  like  a  rocket, 
137 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

shooting  through  the  blue  air  en  route  for  old 
Ireland.1 

In  another  Irish  legend  an  enchanted  ass  comes 
into  the  kitchen  of  a  great  house  every  night, 
and  washes  the  dishes  and  scours  the  tins,  so 
that  the  servants  lead  an  easy  life  of  it.  After 
a  while  in  their  exuberant  gratitude  they  offer 
him  any  present  for  which  he  may  feel  inclined 
to  ask.  He  desires  only  "  an  ould  coat,  to  keep 
the  chill  off  of  him  these  could  nights  ;  "  but  as 
soon  as  he  gets  into  the  coat  he  resumes  his 
human  form  and  bids  them  good-by,  and  thence- 
forth they  may  wash  their  own  dishes  and  scour 
their  own  tins,  for  all  him. 

But  we  are  diverging  from  the  subject  of 
swan-maidens,  and  are  in  danger  of  losing  our- 
selves in  that  labyrinth  of  popular  fancies  which 
is  more  intricate  than  any  that  Daidalos  ever 
planned.  The  significance  of  all  these  sealskins 
and  feather  dresses  and  mermaid  caps  and  were- 
wolf girdles  may  best  be  sought  in  the  etymo- 
logy of  words  like  the  German  leichnam^  in  which 
the  body  is  described  as  a  garment  of  flesh  for 
the  soul.2  In  the  nai've  philosophy  of  primitive 
thinkers,  the  soul,  in  passing  from  one  visible 
shape  to  another,  had  only  to  put  on  the  out- 
ward integument  of  the  creature  in  which  it 
wished  to  incarnate  itself.  With  respect  to  the 

1  Kennedy,  Fictions  of  the  Irish  Celts,  p.  168. 

2  Baring- Gould,  Book  of  Werewolves,  p.  163. 

138 


WEREWOLVES  AND  SWAN-MAIDENS 

mode  of  metamorphosis,  there  is  little  difference 
between  the  werewolf  and  the  swan-maiden  ; 
and  the  similarity  is  no  less  striking  between  the 
genesis  of  the  two  conceptions.  The  original 
werewolf  is  the  night-wind,  regarded  now  as  a 
manlike  deity  and  now. as  a  howling  lupine  fiend ; 
and  the  original  swan-maiden  is  the  light  fleecy 
cloud,  regarded  either  as  a  woman-like  goddess 
or  as  a  bird  swimming  in  the  sky  sea.  The  one 
conception  has  been  productive  of  little  else  but 
horrors  ;  the  other  has  given  rise  to  a  great  vari- 
ety of  fanciful  creations,  from  the  treacherous 
mermaid  and  the  fiendish  nightmare  to  the 
gentle  Undine,  the  charming  Nausikaa,  and  the 
stately  Muse  of  classic  antiquity. 

We  have  seen  that  the  original  werewolf, 
howling  in  the  wintry  blast,  is  a  kind  of  psycho- 
pomp,  or  leader  of  departed  souls  ;  he  is  the  wild 
ancestor  of  the  death-dog,  whose  voice  under 
the  window  of  a  sick-chamber  is  even  now  a 
sound  of  ill  omen.  The  swan-maiden  has  also 
been  supposed  to  summon  the  dying  to  her 
home  in  the  Phaiakian  land.  The  Valkyries, 
with  their  shirts  of  swan  plumage,  who  hovered 
over  Scandinavian  battlefields  to  receive  the 
souls  of  falling  heroes,  were  identical  with  the 
Hindu  Apsaras  ;  and  the  Houris  of  the  Mussul- 
man belong  to  the  same  family.  Even  for  the 
angels,  —  women  with  large  wings,  who  are  seen 
in  popular  pictures  bearing  mortals  on  high  to- 
139 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

ward  heaven,  —  we  can  hardly  claim  a  different 
kinship.  Melusina,  when  she  leaves  the  castle 
of  Lusignan,  becomes  a  Banshee ;  and  it  has 
been  a  common  superstition  among  sailors,  that 
the  appearance  of  a  mermaid,  with  her  comb 
and  looking-glass,  foretokens  shipwreck,  with 
the  loss  of  all  on  board. 

October,  1870. 


140 


IV 

LIGHT   AND   DARKNESS 

WHEN  Maitland  blasphemously  as- 
serted that  God  was  but  "a  Bogie 
of  the  nursery,"  he  unwittingly  made 
a  remark  as  suggestive  in  point  of  philology  as  it 
was  crude  and  repulsive  in  its  atheism.  When 
examined  with  the  lenses  of  linguistic  science, 
the  "  Bogie  "  or  "  Bug-a-boo  "  or  "  Bugbear" 
of  nursery  lore  turns  out  to  be  identical,  not  only 
with  the  fairy  "  Puck,"  whom  Shakespeare  has 
immortalized,  but  also  with  the  Slavonic  "  Bog  " 
and  the  "  Baga  "  of  the  Cuneiform  Inscriptions, 
both  of  which  are  names  for  the  Supreme  Being. 
If  we  proceed  further,  and  inquire  after  the  an- 
cestral form  of  these  epithets,  —  so  strangely 
incongruous  in  their  significations,  —  we  shall 
find  it  in  the  Old  Aryan  "  Bhaga,"  which  reap- 
pears unchanged  in  the  Sanskrit  of  the  Vedas, 
and  has  left  a  memento  of  itself  in  the  sur- 
name of  the  Phrygian  Zeus  "  Bagaios."  It 
seems  originally  to  have  denoted  either  the  un- 
clouded sun  or  the  sky  of  noonday  illumined 
by  the  solar  rays.  In  Sayana's  commentary  on 
the  Rig- Veda,  Bhaga  is  enumerated  among  the 
141 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

seven  (or  eight)  sons  of  Aditi,  the  boundless 
Orient ;  and  he  is  elsewhere  described  as  the 
lord  of  life,  the  giver  of  bread,  and  the  bringer 
of  happiness.1 

Thus  the  same  name  which,  to  the  Vedic 
poet,  to  the  Persian  of  the  time  of  Xerxes,  and 
to  the  modern  Russian,  suggests  the  supreme 
majesty  of  deity,  is  in  English  associated  with 
an  ugly  and  ludicrous  fiend,  closely  akin  to  that 
grotesque  Northern  Devil  of  whom  Southey 
was  unable  to  think  without  laughing.  Such  is 
the  irony  of  fate  toward  a  deposed  deity.  The 
German  name  for  idol  —  Abgott,  that  is,  "  ex- 
god  "  or  "  dethroned  god  "  —  sums  up  in  a  sin- 
gle etymology  the  history  of  the  havoc  wrought 
by  monotheism  among  the  ancient  symbols  of 
deity.  In  the  hospitable  Pantheon  of  the  Greeks 
and  Romans  a  niche  was  always  in  readiness  for 
every  new  divinity  who  could  produce  respect- 
able credentials  ;  but  flie  triumph  of  mono- 
theism converted  the  stately  mansion  into  a 
Pandemonium  peopled  with  fiends.  To  the 
monotheist  an  "  ex-god  "  was  simply  a  devilish 
deceiver  of  mankind  whom  the  true  God  had 
succeeded  in  vanquishing ;  and  thus  the  word 
demon,  which  to  the  ancient  meant  a  divine  or 
semi-divine  being,  came  to  be  applied  to  fiends 

1  Muir's  Sanskrit  Texts,  vol.  iv.  p.   12  ;    Miiller,    Rig- 
Veda  Sanhita,  vol.   i.  pp.  2  3  0—2  5 1  ;  Pick,  Woerterbuch  der 
Indogermanischen  Grundsprache,    p.  124,  s.  v.  Bhaga. 
142 


LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS 

exclusively.  Thus  tHe  Teutonic  races,  who 
preserved  the  name  of  their  highest  divinity, 
Odin,  —  originally,  Guodan,  —  by  which  to  de- 
signate the  God  of  the  Christian,1  were  unable  to 
regard  the  Bog  of  ancient  tradition  as  anything 
but  an  "  ex-god  "  or  vanquished  demon. 

The  most  striking  illustration  of  this  process 
is  to  be  found  in  the  word  devil  itself.  To  a 
reader  unfamiliar  with  the  endless  tricks  which 
language  delights  in  playing,  it  may  seem  shock- 
ing to  be  told  that  the  Gypsies  use  the  word 
devil  as  the  name  of  God.2  This,  however,  is 
not  because  these  people  have  made  the  arch- 
fiend an  object  of  worship,  but  because  the 

1  In  the  North  American    Review,   October,    1869,  p. 
354,  I  have  collected  a  number  of  facts  which  seem  to  me  to 
prove  beyond  question   that  the  name  God  is   derived  from 
Guodan,  the  original  form  of  Odin,  the  supreme  deity  of  our 
pagan  forefathers.     The  case  is  exactly  parallel  to  that  of  the 
French  Dieu,  which  is  descended  from  the  Deus  of  the  pagan 
Roman. 

2  See   Pott,  Die   Zigeuner,  ii.  311  ;  Kuhn,  Beitrage,  i. 
147.     Yet  in  the  worship  of  dewel  by  the  Gypsies  is  to  be 
found  the  element  of  diabolism  invariably  present  in  barbaric 
worship.     "  Dewel,  the  great  god  in  heaven  {dewa,  deus^), 
is  rather  feared  than  loved  by  these  weather-beaten  outcasts, 
for  he  harms  them  on  their  wanderings  with  his  thunder  and 
lightning,  his  snow  and  rain,  and  his  stars  interfere  with  then- 
dark  doings.     Therefore  they  curse  him  foully  when  misfor- 
tune falls  on  them  ;  and  when  a  child  dies,  they  say  that 
Dewel  has  eaten  it."     Tylor,  Primitive  Culture,  vol.  ii.  p. 
248. 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

Gypsy  language,  descending  directly  from  the 
Sanskrit,  has  retained  in  its  primitive  exalted 
sense  a  word  which  the  English  language  has 
received  only  in  its  debased  and  perverted  sense. 
The  Teutonic  words  devil,  teufel,  diuval,  djofull, 
djevful,,  may  all  be  traced  back  to  the  Zend  dev, 
a  name  in  which  is  implicitly  contained  the 
record  of  the  oldest  monotheistic  revolution 
known  to  history.  The  influence  of  the  so-called 
Zoroastrian  reform  upon  the  long-subsequent 
development  of  Christianity  will  receive  further 
notice  in  the  course  of  this  paper ;  for  the  pre- 
sent it  is  enough  to  know  that  it  furnished  for 
all  Christendom  the  name  by  which  it  desig- 
nates the  author  of  evil.  To  the  Parsee  follower 
of  Zarathustra  the  name  of  the  Devil  has  very 
nearly  the  same  signification  as  to  the  Christian ; 
yet,  as  Grimm  has  shown,  it  is  nothing  else 
than  a  corruption  of  (leva,  the  Sanskrit  name  for 
God.  When  Zarathustra  overthrew  the  prime- 
val Aryan  nature-worship  in  Bactria,  this  name 
met  the  same  evil  fate  which  in  early  Christian 
times  overtook  the  word  demon,  and  from  a 
symbol  of  reverence  became  henceforth  a  sym- 
bol of  detestation.2  But  throughout  the  rest  of 

1  See  Grimm,  Deutsche  Mythologie,  939. 

2  The  Buddhistic  as  well  as  the  Zarathustrian  reformation 
degraded  the  Vedic  gods  into  demons.     "  In  Buddhism  we 
find  these  ancient  devas,  Indra  and  the  rest,  carried  about  at 
shows,  as  servants  of  Buddha,  as  goblins,  or  fabulous  heroes. ' ' 

144 


LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS 

the  Aryan  world  it  achieved  a  nobler  career, 
producing  the  Greek  theos,  the  Lithuanian 
diewas,  the  Latin  deus,  and  hence  the  modern 
French  Dieu,  all  meaning  God. 

If  we  trace  back  this  remarkable  word  to  its 
primitive  source  in  that  once  lost  but  now  par- 
tially recovered  mother-tongue  from  which  all 
our  Aryan  languages  are  descended,  we  find  a 
root  div  or  dyu,  meaning  "  to  shine."  From  the 
first-mentioned  form  comes  deva,  with  its  nu- 
merous progeny  of  good  and  evil  appellatives; 
from  the  latter  is  derived  the  name  of  Dyaus, 
with  its  brethren,  Zeus  and  Jupiter.  In  San- 
skrit dyUy  as  a  noun,  means  "  sky  "  and  "  day ;  " 
and  there  are  many  passages  in  the  Rig-Veda 
where  the  character  of  the  god  Dyaus,  as  the 
personification  of  the  sky  or  the  brightness  of 
the  ethereal  heavens,  is  unmistakably  apparent. 
This  key  unlocks  for  us  one  of  the  secrets  of 
Greek  mythology.  So  long  as  there  was  for 
Zeus  no  better  etymology  than  that  which  as- 
signed it  to  the  root  zettj  "to  live,"1  there  was 
little  hope  of  understanding  the  nature  of  Zeus. 

Max  Miiller,  Chips,  i.  25.  This  is  like  the  Christian  change 
of  Odin  into  an  ogre,  and  of  Thor  into  the  Devil. 

1  Zeus  —  Aia  —  Zfjva  —  81  ov  £»}v  del  TTCUTI  TOIS  £axriv 
VTrapx*'-  Plato,  Krafy/os,  p.  396,  A.,  with  Stallbaum's 
note.  See,  also,  Proklos,  Comm.  ad  Tim#um,  ii.  p.  226, 
Schneider ;  and  compare  Pseudo-Aristotle,  De  Mundo,  p. 
401,  a,  15,  who  adopts  the  etymology  Si  ov  £aj/x,ev.  See,  also, 
Diogenes  Laertius,  vii.  147. 

145 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

But  when  we  learn  that  Zeus  is  identical  with 
Dyaus,  the  bright  sky,  we  are  enabled  to  under- 
stand Horace's  expression,  "  sub  Jove  frigido," 
and  the  prayer  of  the  Athenians,  "  Rain,  rain, 
dear  Zeus,  on  the  land  of  the  Athenians,  and 
on  the  fields."  l  Such  expressions  as  these  were 
retained  by  the  Greeks  and  Romans  long  after 
they  had  forgotten  that  their  supreme  deity  was 
once  the  sky.  Yet  even  the  Brahman,  from 
whose  mind  the  physical  significance  of  the  god's 
name  never  wholly  disappeared,  could  speak  of 
him  as  Father  Dyaus,  the  great  Pitri,  or  ances- 
tor of  gods  and  men;  and  in  this  reverential 
name  Dyaus  pitar  may  be  seen  the  exact  equiva- 
lent of  the  Roman's  Jupiter,  or  Jove  the  Father. 
The  same  root  can  be  followed  into  Old  Ger- 
man, where  Zio  is  the  god  of  day ;  and  into 
Anglo-Saxon,  where  Tiwsdaeg,  or  the  day  of 
Zeus,  is  the  ancestral  form  of  Tuesday. 

Thus  we  again  reach  the  same  results  which 
were  obtained  from  the  examination  of  the  name 
Ehaga.  These  various  names  for  the  supreme 
Aryan  god,  which  without  the  help  afforded  by 
the  Vedas  could  never  have  been  interpreted, 
are  seen  to  have  been  originally  applied  to  the 
sun-illumined  firmament.  Countless  other  ex- 

1  Eux?)  'AOyvauov,  vtrov,  v<rov,  3>  <£iXe  Zev,  Kara  rijs  dpov- 
pas  rtav  'AOrjvaLdiv  /cat  TO>V  Trc&W.  Marcus  Aurelius,  v.  7  ; 
ve  8'  apa  Zeus  (Twee's.  Horn.  Iliad,  xii.  25  ;  cf.  Petronius 
Arbiter,  Sat.  xliv. 


LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS 

amples,  when  similarly  analyzed,  show  that  the 
earliest  Aryan  conception  of  a  Divine  Power, 
nourishing  man  and  sustaining  the  universe, 
was  suggested  by  the  light  of  the  mighty  Sun  ; 
who,  as  modern  science  has  shown,  is  the  origi- 
nator of  all  life  and  motion  upon  the  globe, 
and  whom  the  ancients  delighted  to  believe  the 
source,  not  only  of  "  the  golden  light," l  but  of 
everything  that  is  bright,  joy-giving,  and  pure. 
Nevertheless,  in  accepting  this  conclusion  as 
well  established  by  linguistic  science,  we  must 
be  on  our  guard  against  an  error  into  which 
writers  on  mythology  are  very  liable  to  fall. 
Neither  sky  nor  sun  nor  light  of  day,  neither 
Zeus  nor  Apollo,  neither  Dyaus  nor  Indra,  was 
ever  worshipped  by  the  ancient  Aryan  in  any- 
thing like  a  monotheistic  sense.  To  interpret 
Zeus  or  Jupiter  as  originally  the  supreme  Aryan 
god,  and  to  regard  classic  paganism  as  one  of 
the  degraded  remnants  of  a  primeval  monothe- 
ism, is  to  sin  against  the  canons  of  a  sound 
inductive  philosophy.  Philology  itself  teaches 
us  that  this  could  not  have  been  so.  Father 
Dyaus  was  originally  the  bright  sky  and  nothing 
more.  Although  his  name  became  generalized, 
in  the  classic  languages,  into  deus^  or  God,  it  is 
quite  certain  that  in  early  days,  before  the  Aryan 
separation,  it  had  acquired  no  such  exalted  sig- 

1  "  II  Sol,  dell  aurea  luce  eterno  fonte."    Tasso,  Gerttsa- 
iemme,  xv.  47  ;  cf.  Dante,  Paradiso,  x.  28. 

H7 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

nificance.  It  was  only  in  Greece  and  Rome  — 
or,  we  may  say,  among  the  still  united  Italo- 
Hellenic  tribes  —  that  Jupiter-Zeus  attained  a 
preeminence  over  all  other  deities.  The  people 
of  Iran  quite  rejected  him,  the  Teutons  preferred 
Thor  and  Odin,  and  in  India  he  was  super- 
seded, first  by  Indra,  afterwards  by  Brahma  and 
Vishnu.  We  need  not,  therefore,  look  for  a 
single  supreme  divinity  among  the  old  Aryans  ; 
nor  may  we  expect  to  find  any  sense,  active  or 
dormant,  of  monotheism  in  the  primitive  intel- 
ligence of  uncivilized  men.1  The  whole  fabric 
of  comparative  mythology,  as  at  present  consti- 
tuted, and  as  described  above,  in  the  first  of 
these  papers,  rests  upon  the  postulate  that  the 
earliest  religion  was  pure  fetichism. 

In  the  unsystematic  nature-worship  of  the  old 
Aryans  the  gods  are  presented  to  us  only  as 
vague  powers,  with  their  nature  and  attributes 
dimly  defined,  and  their  relations  to  each  other 

1  The  Aryans  were,  however,  doubtless  better  off  than  the 
tribes  of  North  America.  "In  no  Indian  language  could  the 
early  missionaries  find  a  word  to  express  the  idea  of  God. 
Manitou  and  Oki  meant  anything  endowed  with  supernatural 
powers,  from  a  snake-skin  or  a  greasy  Indian  conjurer  up  to 
Manabozho  and  Jouskeha.  The  priests  were  forced  to  use  a 
circumlocution,  —  '  the  great  chief  of  men,'  or  '  he_who  lives 
in  the  sky.'  "  Parkman,  Jesuits  in  North  America,  p.  Ixxix. 
"The  Algonquins  used  no  oaths,  for  their  language  supplied 
none  ;  doubtless  because  their  mythology  had  no  beings  suffi- 
ciently distinct  to  swear  by."  Ibid.  p.  31. 
148 


LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS 

fluctuating  and  often  contradictory.  There  is 
no  theogony,  no  regular  subordination  of  one 
deity  to  another.  The  same  pair  of  divinities 
appear  now  as  father  and  daughter,  now  as 
brother  and  sister,  now  as  husband  and  wife; 
and  again  they  quite  lose  their  personality,  and 
are  represented  as  mere  natural  phenomena.  As 
Miiller  observes,  "  The  poets  of  the  Veda  in- 
dulged freely  in  theogonic  speculations  without 
being  frightened  by  any  contradictions.  They 
knew  of  Indra  as  the  greatest  of  gods,  they  knew 
of  Agni  as  the  god  of  gods,  they  knew  of  Varuna 
as  the  ruler  of  all ;  but  they  were  by  no  means 
startled  at  the  idea  that  their  Indra  had  a  mother, 
or  that  their  Agni  [Latin  ignis]  was  born  like 
a  babe  from  the  friction  of  two,  fire-sticks,  or 
that  Varuna  and  his  brother  Mitra  were  nursed 
in  the  lap  of  Aditi."  l  Thus  we  have  seen  Bhaga, 
the  daylight,  represented  as  the  offspring  of 
Aditi,  the  boundless  Orient ;  but  he  had  several 
brothers,  and  among  them  were  Mitra,  the  sun, 
Varuna,  the  overarching  firmament,  and  Vivas- 
vat,  the  vivifying  sun.  Manifestly  we  have  here 
but  so  many  different  names  for  what  is  at  bot- 
tom one  and  the  same  conception.  The  com- 
mon element  which,  in  Dyaus  and  Varuna,  in 
Bhaga  and  Indra,  was  made  an  object  of  wor- 
ship is  the  brightness,  warmth,  and  life  of  day, 
a*  contrasted  with  the  darkness,  cold,  and  seem- 

1  Miiller,  Rig-Veda  Sanhita,  i.  230. 
149 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

ing  death  of  the  night-time.  And  this  common 
element  was  personified  in  as  many  different 
ways  as  the  unrestrained  fancy  of  the  ancient 
worshipper  saw  fit  to  devise.1 

Thus  we  begin  to  see  why  a  few  simple  ob- 
jects, like  the  sun,  the  sky,  the  dawn,  and  the 
night,  should  be  represented  in  mythology  by 
such  a  host  of  gods,  goddesses,  and  heroes.  For 
at  one  time  the  Sun  is  represented  as  the  con- 
queror of  hydras  and  dragons  who  hide  away 
from  men  the  golden  treasures  of  light  and 
warmth,  and  at  another  time  he  is  represented 
as  a  weary  voyager  traversing  the  sky  sea  amid 
many  perils,  with  the  steadfast  purpose  of  re- 
turning to  his  western  home  and  his  twilight 
bride;  hence  the  different  conceptions  of  Hera- 
kles,  Bellerophon,  and  Odysseus.  Now  he  is 
represented  as  the  son  of  the  Dawn,  and  again, 
with  equal  propriety,  as  the  son  of  the  Night, 
and  the  fickle  lover  of  the  Dawn;  hence  we 
have,  on  the  one  hand,  stories  of  a  virgin  mother 
who  dies  in  giving  birth  to  a  hero,  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  stories  of  a  beautiful  maiden  who  is 
forsaken  and  perhaps  cruelly  slain  by  her  treach- 
erous lover.  Indeed,  the  Sun's  adventures  with 
so  many  dawn-maidens  have  given  him  quite  a 
bad  character,  and  the  legends  are  numerous  in 
which  he  appears  as  the  prototype  of  Don  Juan. 
Yet  again  his  separation  from  the  bride  of  his 
1  Compare  the  remarks  of  Breal,  Hercule  et  Cacus,  p.  13. 


LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS 

youth  is  described  as  due  to  no  fault  of  his  own, 
but  to  a  resistless  decree  of  fate,  which  hurries 
him  away,  as  Aineias  was  compelled  to  abandon 
Dido.  Or,  according  to  a  third  and  equally 
plausible  notion,  he  is  a  hero  of  ascetic  virtues, 
and  the  dawn-maiden  is  a  wicked  enchantress, 
daughter  of  the  sensual  Aphrodite,  who  vainly 
endeavours  to  seduce  him.  In  the  story  of 
Odysseus  these  various  conceptions  are  blended 
together.  When  enticed  by  artful  women,1  he 
yields  for  a  while  to  the  temptation ;  but  by  and 
by  his  longing  to  see  Penelope  takes  him  home- 
ward, albeit  with  a  record  which  Penelope  might 
not  altogether  have  liked.  Again,  though  the 
Sun,  "  always  roaming  with  a  hungry  heart," 
has  seen  many  cities  and  customs  of  strange 
men,  he  is  nevertheless  confined  to  a  single 
path,  —  a  circumstance  which  seems  to  have 
occasioned  much  speculation  in  the  primeval 
mind.  Garcilaso  de  la  Vega  relates  of  a  certain 
Peruvian  Inca,  who  seems  to  have  been  an 

1  It  should  be  borne  in  mind,  however,  that  one  of  the 
women  who  tempt  Odysseus  is  not  a  dawn-maiden,  but  a 
goddess  of  darkness  ;  Kalypso  answers  to  Venus-Ursula  in  the 
myth  of  Tannhauser.  Kirke,  on  the  other  hand,  seems  to  be 
a  dawn-maiden,  like  Medeia,  whom  she  resembles.  In  her 
the  wisdom  of  the  dawn-goddess  Athene,  the  loftiest  of  Greek 
divinities,  becomes  degraded  into  the  art  of  an  enchantress. 
She  reappears,  in  the  Arabian  Nights,  as  the  wicked  Queen 
Labe,  whose  sorcery  none  of  her  lovers  can  baffle,  save  Beder, 
king  of  Persia. 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

cc  infidel "  with  reference  to  the  orthodox  my- 
thology of  his  day,  that  he  thought  the  Sun  was 
not  such  a  mighty  god  after  all ;  for  if  he  were, 
he  would  wander  about  the  heavens  at  random 
instead  of  going  forever,  like  a  horse  in  a  tread- 
mill, along  the  same  course.  The  American 
Indians  explained  this  circumstance  by  myths 
which  told  how  the  Sun  was  once  caught  and 
tied  with  a  chain  which*  would  only  let  him 
swing  a  little  way  to  one  side  or  the  other.  The 
ancient  Aryan  developed  the  nobler  myth  of  the 
labours  of  Herakles,  performed  in  obedience 
to  the  bidding  of  Eurystheus.  Again,  the  Sun 
must  needs  destroy  its  parents,  the  Night  and 
the  Dawn;  and  accordingly  his  parents,  fore- 
warned by  prophecy,  expose  him  in  infancy,  or 
order  him  to  be  put  to  death ;  but  his  tragic 
destiny  never  fails  to  be  accomplished  to  the 
letter.  And  again  the  Sun,  who  engages  in 
quarrels  not  his  own,  is  sometimes  represented 
as  retiring  moodily  from  the  sight  of  men,  like 
Achilleus  and  Meleagros  :  he  is  short-lived  and 
ill-fated,  born  to  do  much  good  and  to  be  re- 
paid with  ingratitude ;  his  life  depends  on  the 
duration  of  a  burning  brand,  and  when  that  is 
extinguished  he  must  die. 

The  myth  of  the  great  Theban  hero,  Oidi- 
pous,  well  illustrates  the  multiplicity  of  con- 
ceptions which  clustered  about  the  daily  career 
of  the  solar  orb.     His  father,  Laios,  had  been 
152 


LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS 

warned  by  the  Delphic  oracle  that  he  was  in 
danger  of  death  from  his  own  son.  The  newly 
born  Oidipous  was  therefore  exposed  on  the 
hillside  ;  but,  like  Romulus  and  Remus,  and 
all  infants  similarly  situated  in  legend,  was  duly 
rescued.  He  was  taken  to  Corinth,  where  he 
grew  up  to  manhood.  Journeying  once  to 
Thebes,  he  got  into  a  quarrel  with  an  old  man 
whom  he  met  on  the  road,  and  slew  him,  who 
was  none  other  than  his  father,  Laios.  Reach- 
ing Thebes,  he  found  the  city  harassed  by  the 
Sphinx,  who  afflicted  the  land  with  drought 
until  she  should  receive  an  answer  to  her  rid- 
dles. Oidipous  destroyed  the  monster  by  solv- 
ing her  dark  sayings,  and  as  a  reward  received 
the  kingdom,  with  his  own  mother,  lokaste,  as 
his  bride.  Then  the  Erinyes  hastened  the  dis- 
covery of  these  dark  deeds  ;  lokaste  died  in  her 
bridal  chamber  ;  and  Oidipous,  having  blinded 
himself,  fled  to  the  grove  of  the  Eumenides, 
near  Athens,  where,  amid  flashing  lightning 
and  peals  of  thunder,  he  died. 

Oidipous  is  the  Sun.  Like  all  the  solar  he- 
roes, from  Herakles  and  Perseus  to  Sigurd  and 
William  Tell,  he  performs  his  marvellous  deeds 
at  the  behest  of  others.  His  father,  Laios,  is 
none  other  than  the  Vedic  Dasyu,  the  night- 
demon  who  is  sure  to  be  destroyed  by  his  solar 
offspring.  In  the  evening,  Oidipous  is  united 
to  the  Dawn,  the  mother  who  had  borne  him 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

at  daybreak  ;  and  here  the  original  story  doubt- 
less ended.  In  the  Vedic  hymns  we  find  Indra, 
the  Sun,  born  of  Dahana  (Daphne),  the  Dawn, 
whom  he  afterwards,  in  the  evening  twilight, 
marries.  To  the  Indian  mind  the  story  was 
here  complete  ;  but  the  Greeks  had  forgotten 
and  outgrown  the  primitive  signification  of  the 
myth.  To  them  Oidipous  and  lokaste  were 
human,  or  at  least  anthropomorphic  beings ; 
and  a  marriage  between  them  was  a  fearful  crime 
which  called  for  bitter  expiation.  Thus  the  lat- 
ter part  of  the  story  arose  in  the  effort  to  satisfy 
a  moral  feeling.  As  the  name  of  Laios  denotes 
the  dark  night,  so,  like  lole,  Oinone,  and  lamos, 
the  word  lokaste  signifies  the  delicate  violet 
tints  of  the  morning  and  evening  clouds.  Oidi- 
pous was  exposed,  like  Paris  upon  Ida  (a  Vedic 
word  meaning  "  the  earth  "),  because  the  sun- 
light in  the  morning  lies  upon  the  hillside.1  He 
is  borne  on  to  the  destruction  of  his  father  and 
the  incestuous  marriage  with  his  mother  by  an 
irresistible  Moira,  or  Fate  ;  the  sun  cannot  but 
slay  the  darkness  and  hasten  to  the  couch  of 

1  The  Persian  Cyrus  is  an  historical  personage  ;  but  the 
story  of  his  perils  in  infancy  belongs  to  solar  mythology  as 
much  as  the  stories  of  the  magic  sleep  of  Charlemagne  and 
Barbarossa.  His  grandfather,  Astyages,  is  purely  a  mythical 
creation,  his  name  being  identical  with  that  of  the  night- 
demon,  Azidahaka,  who  appears  in  the  Shah-Nameh  as  the 
biting  serpent  Zohak.  See  Cox,  Mythology  of  the  Aryan 
Nations,  ii.  358. 

'54 


LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS 

the  violet  twilight.1  The  Sphinx  is  the  storm- 
demon  who  sits  on  the  cloud-rock  and  impri- 
sons the  rain  ;  she  is  the  same  as  Medusa,  Ahi, 
or  Echidna,  and  Chimaira,  and  is  akin  to  the 
throttling  snakes  of  darkness  which  the  jealous 
Here  sent  to  destroy  Herakles  in  his  cradle. 
The  idea  was  not  derived  from  Egypt,  but  the 
Greeks,  on  rinding  Egyptian  figures  resembling 
their  conception  of  the  Sphinx,  called  them  by 
the  same  name.  The  omniscient  Sun  compre- 
hends the  sense  of  her  dark  mutterings,  and 
destroys  her,  as  Indra  slays  Vritra,  bringing 
down  rain  upon  the  parched  earth.  The  Eri- 
nyes, who  bring  to  light  the  crimes  of  Oidipous, 
have  been  explained,  in  a  previous  paper,  as  the 
personification  of  daylight,  which  reveals  the 
evil  deeds  done  under  the  cover  of  night.  The 
grove  of  the  Erinyes,  like  the  garden  of  the 
Hyperboreans,  represents  "the  fairy  network 
of  clouds,  which  are  the  first  to  receive  and  the 
last  to  lose  the  light  of  the  sun  in  the  morning 
and  in  the  evening  ;  hence,  although  Oidipous 
dies  in  a  thunderstorm,  yet  the  Eumenides  are 
kind  to  him,  and  his  last  hour  is  one  of  deep 
peace  and  tranquillity."  2  To  the  last  remains 
with  him  his  daughter  Antigone,  "  she  who  is 

1  In  mediaeval  legend  this  resistless  Moira  is  transformed 
into  the  curse  which  prevents  the  Wandering  Jew  from  rest- 
ing until  the  day  of  judgment. 

3  Cox,  Manual  of  Mythology,  p.  134. 

'55 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

born  opposite,"  the  pale  light  which  springs  up 
opposite  to  the  setting  sun. 

These  examples  show  that  a  story-root  may 
be  as  prolific  of  heterogeneous  offspring  as  a 
word-root.  Just  as  we  find  the  root  spak,  "  to 
look,"  begetting  words  so  various  as  sceptic, 
bishop,  speculate,  conspicuous,  species,  and  spice,  we 
must  expect  to  find  a  simple  representation  of 
the  diurnal  course  of  the  sun,  like  those  lyri- 
cally given  in  the  Veda,  branching  off  into  stories 
as  diversified  as  those  of  Oidipous,  Herakles, 
Odysseus,  and  Siegfried.  In  fact,  the  types 
upon  which  stories  are  constructed  are  wonder- 
fully few.  Some  clever  playwright  —  I  believe 
it  was  Scribe  —  has  said  that  there  are  only 
seven  possible  dramatic  situations  ;  that  is,  all  the 
plays  in  the  world  may  be  classed  with  some  one 
of  seven  archetypal  dramas.1  If  this  be  true,  the 
astonishing  complexity  of  mythology  taken  in 
the  concrete,  as  compared  with  its  extreme  sim- 
plicity when  analyzed,  need  not  surprise  us. 

The  extreme  limits  of  divergence  between 
stories  descended  from  a  common  root  are  prob- 
ably reached  in  the  myths  of  light  and  darkness 

1  In  his  interesting  appendix  to  Henderson's  Folk- Lore  of 
the  Northern  Counties  of  England,  Mr.  Baring-Gould  has 
made  an  ingenious  and  praiseworthy  attempt  to  reduce  the 
entire  existing  mass  of  household  legends  to  about  fifty  story- 
roots  ;  and  his  list,  though  both  redundant  and  defective,  is 
nevertheless,  as  an  empirical  classification,  very  instructive. 

156 


LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS 

with  which  the  present  discussion  is  mainly  con- 
cerned. The  subject  will  be  best  elucidated  by 
taking  a  single  one  of  these  myths  and  follow- 
ing its  various  fortunes  through  different  regions 
of  the  Aryan  world.  The  myth  of  Hercules 
and  Cacus  has  been  treated  by  M.  Breal  in  an 
essay  which  is  one  of  the  most  valuable  contri- 
butions ever  made  to  the  study  of  comparative 
mythology ;  and  while  following  his  footsteps 
our  task  will  be  an  easy  one. 

The  battle  between  Hercules  and  Cacus,  al- 
though one  of  the  oldest  of  the  traditions  com- 
mon to  the  whole  Indo-European  race,  appears 
in  Italy  as  a  purely  local  legend,  and  is  narrated 
as  such  by  Virgil,  in  the  eighth  book  of  the 
jEneid ;  by  Livy,  at  the  beginning  of  his  his- 
tory ;  and  by  Propertius  and  Ovid.  Hercules, 
journeying  through  Italy  after  his  victory  over 
Geryon,  stops  to  rest  by  the  bank  of  the  Tiber. 
While  he  is  taking  his  repose,  the  three-headed 
monster  Cacus,  a  son  of  Vulcan  and  a  formid- 
able brigand,  comes  and  steals  his  cattle,  and 
drags  them  tail  foremost  to  a  secret  cavern  in 
the  rocks.  But  the  lowing  of  the  cows  arouses 
Hercules,  and  he  runs  toward  the  cavern  where 
the  robber,  already  frightened,  has  taken  refuge. 
Armed  with  a  huge  flinty  rock,  he  breaks  open 
the  entrance  of  the  cavern,  and  confronts  the 
demon  within,  who  vomits  forth  flames  at  him 
and  roars  like  the  thunder  in  the  storm-cloud. 
U7 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

After  a  short  combat,  his  hideous  body  falls  at 
the  feet  of  the  invincible  hero,  who  erects  on  the 
spot  an  altar  to  Jupiter  Inventor,  in  commem- 
oration of  the  recovery  of  his  cattle.  Ancient 
Rome  teemed  with  reminiscences  of  this  event, 
which  Livy  regarded  as  first  in  the  long  series 
of  the  exploit's"  of  his  countrymen.  The  place 
where  Hercules  pastured  his  oxen  was  known 
long  after  as  the  Forum  Boarium ;  near  it  the 
Porta  Trigemina  preserved  the  recollection  of 
the  monster's  triple  head ;  and  in  the  time  of 
Diodorus  Siculus  sightseers  were  shown  the 
cavern  of  Cacus  on  the  slope  of  the  Aventine. 
Every  tenth  day  the  earlier  generations  of  Ro- 
mans celebrated  the  victory  with  solemn  sacri- 
fices at  the  Ara  Maxima ;  and  on  days  of  tri- 
umph the  fortunate  general  deposited  there  a 
tithe  of  his  booty,  to  be  distributed  among  the 
citizens. 

In  this  famous  myth,  however,  the  god  Her- 
cules did  not  originally  figure.  The  Latin  Her- 
cules was  an  essentially  peaceful  and  domestic 
deity,  watching  over  households  and  inclosures, 
and  nearly  akin  to  Terminus  and  the  Penates. 
He  does  not  appear  to  have  been  a  solar  divinity 
at  all.  But  the  purely  accidental  resemblance 
of  his  name  to  that  of  the  Greek  deity  Hera- 
kles,1  and  the  manifest  identity  of  the  Cacus 

1  There  is  nothing  in  common  between  the  names  Hercules 
and  Herakles.  The  latter  is  a  compound,  formed  like  Themis- 

158 


LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS 

myth  with  the  story  of  the  victory  of  Herakles 
over  Geryon,  led  to  the  substitution  of  Hercu- 
les for  the  original  hero  of  the  legend,  who  was 
none  other  than  Jupiter,  called  by  his  Sabine 
name  Sancus.  Now  Johannes  Lydus  informs 
us  that,  in  Sabine,  Sancus  signified  "  the  sky," 
a  meaning  which  we  have  already  seen  to  belong 
to  the  name  Jupiter.  The  same  substitution  of 
the  Greek  hero  for  the  Roman  divinity  led  to 
the  alteration  of  the  name  of  the  demon  over- 
come by  his  thunderbolts.  The  corrupted  title 
Cacus  was  supposed  to  be  identical  with  the 
Greek  word  kakos,  meaning  "evil,"  and  the 
corruption  was  suggested  by  the  epithet  of 
Herakles,  Alexikakos,  or  "  the  averter  of  ill." 
Originally,  however,  the  name  was  C*ecius,  "  he 
who  blinds  or  darkens,"  and  it  corresponds 
literally  to  the  name  of  the  Greek  demon  Kai- 

tokles  ;  the  former  is  a  simple  derivative  from  the  root  of  fier- 
cere,  "  to  inclose."  If  Herakles  had  any  equivalent  in  Latin, 
it  would  necessarily  begin  with  S,  and  not  with  H,  as  septa 
corresponds  to  €7rra,  sequor  to  eirofj.at,  etc.  It  should  be  noted, 
however,  that  Mommsen,  in  the  fourth  edition  of  his  His- 
tory, abandons  this  view,  and  observes  :  "  Auch  der  grie- 
chische  Herakles  ist  friih  als  Herclus,  Hercoles,  Hercules  in 
Italien  einheimisch  und  dort  in  eigenthumlicher  Weise  auf- 
gefasst  worden,  wie  es  scheint  zunachst  als  Gott  des  gewagten 
Gewinns  und  der  ausserordentlichen  Vermogensvermehrung. " 
Romische  Geschichte,  i.  1 8 1 .  One  would  gladly  learn  Momm- 
sen's  reasons  for  recurring  to  this  apparently  less  defensible 
opinion. 

'59 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

kias,  whom  an  old  proverb,  preserved  by  Aulus 
Gellius,  describes  as  a  stealer  of  the  clouds.1 

Thus  the  significance  of  the  myth  becomes 
apparent.  The  three-headed  Cacus  is  seen  to 
be  a  near  kinsman  of  Geryon's  three-headed 
dog  Orthros,  and  of  the  three-headed  Kerberos, 
the  hellhound  who  guards  the  dark  regions 
below  the  horizon.  He  is  the  original  werewolf 
or  Rakshasa,  the  fiend  of  the  storm  who  steals 
the  bright  cattle  of  Helios,  and  hides  them  in 
the  black  cavernous  rock,  from  which  they  are 
afterward  rescued  by  the  schamir  or  lightning- 
stone  of  the  solar  hero.  The  physical  character 
of  the  myth  is  apparent  even  in  the  description 
of  Virgil,  which  reads  wonderfully  like  a  Vedic 
hymn  in  celebration  of  the  exploits  of  Indra. 
But  when  we  turn  to  the  Veda  itself,  we  find 
the  correctness  of  the  interpretation  demon- 
strated again  and  again,  with  inexhaustible  pro- 
digality of  evidence.  Here  we  encounter  again 
the  three-headed  Orthros  under  the  identical 
title  of  Vritra,  "  he  who  shrouds  or  envelops," 
called  also  (^ushna,  "he  who  parches,"  Pani, 
"the  robber,"  and  Ahiy  "the  strangler."  In 
many  hymns  of  the  Rig- Veda  the  story  is  told 
over  and  over,  like  a  musical  theme  arranged  with 
variations.  Indra,  the  god  of  light,  is  a  herds- 

1  For  the  relations  between  Sancus  and  Herakles,  see  Prel- 
ler,  Romische  Mythologie,  p.  635  ;  Vollmer,  Mythologie, 
p.  970. 

1 60 


LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS 

man  who  tends  a  herd  of  bright  golden  or  violet- 
coloured  cattle.  Vritra,  a  snake-like  monster 
with  three  heads,  steals  them  and  hides  them  in 
a  cavern,  but  Indra  slays  him  as  Jupiter  slew 
Caecius,  and  the  cows  are  recovered.  The  lan- 
guage of  the  myth  is  so  significant  that  the 
Hindu  commentators  of  the  Veda  have  them- 
selves given  explanations  of  it  similar  to  those 
proposed  by  modern  philologists.  To  them  the 
legend  never  became  devoid  of  sense,  as  the 
myth  of  Geryon  appeared  to  Greek  scholars 
like  Apollodoros.1 

These  celestial  cattle,  with  their  resplendent 
coats  of  purple  and  gold,  are  the  clouds  lit  up 
by  the  solar  rays  ;  but  the  demon  who  steals 
them  is  not  always  the  fiend  of  the  storm,  act- 
ing in  that  capacity.  They  are  stolen  every 
night  by  Vritra  the  concealer  and  Caecius  the 
darkener,  and  Indra  is  obliged  to  spend  hours 
in  looking  for  them,  sending  Sarama,  the  incon- 
stant twilight,  to  negotiate  for  their  recovery. 
Between  the  storm-myth  and  the  myth  of  night 
and  morning  the  resemblance  is  sometimes  so 
close  as  to  confuse  the  interpretation  of  the 
two.  Many  legends  which  Max  Miiller  ex- 
plains as  myths  of  the  victory  of  day  over  night 
are  explained  by  Dr.  Kuhn  as  storm-myths  ; 
and  the  disagreement  between  two  such  power- 

1  Burnouf,  Bhagavata-Purana,  iii.  p.  -Ixxxvi ;  Brcal,  op. 
cit.  p.  98. 

161 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

ful  champions  would  be  a  standing  reproach 
to  what  is  rather  prematurely  called  the  science 
of  comparative  mythology,  were  it  not  easy  to 
show  that  the  difference  is  merely  apparent  and 
non-essential.  It  is  the  old  story  of  the  shield 
with  two  sides  ;  and  a  comparison  of  the  ideas 
fundamental  to  these  myths  will  show  that  there 
is  no  valid  ground  for  disagreement  in  the  in- 
terpretation of  them.  The  myths  of  schamir  and 
the  divining  rod,  analyzed  in  a  previous  paper, 
explain  the  rending  of  the  thundercloud  and 
the  procuring  of  water  without  especial  refer- 
ence to  any  struggle  between  opposing  divini- 
ties. But  in  the  myth  of  Hercules  and  Cacus, 
the  fundamental  idea  is  the  victory  of  the  solar 
god  over  the  robber  who  steals  the  light.  Now 
whether  the  robber  carries  off  the  light  in  the 
evening  when  Indra  has  gone  to  sleep,  or  boldly 
rears  his  black  form  against  the  sky  during  the 
daytime,  causing  darkness  to  spread  over  the 
earth,  would  make  little  difference  to  the  fram- 
ers  of  the  myth.  To  a  chicken  a  solar  eclipse  is 
the  same  thing  as  nightfall,  and  he  goes  to  roost 
accordingly.  Why,  then,  should  the  primitive 
thinker  have  made  a  distinction  between  the 
darkening  of  the  sky  caused  by  black  clouds 
and  that  caused  by  the  rotation  of  the  earth  ? 
He  had  no  more  conception  of  the  scientific 
explanation  of  these  phenomena  than  the  chicken 
has  of  the  scientific  explanation  of  an  eclipse. 
162 


LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS 

For  him  it  was  enough  to  know  that  the  solar 
radiance  was  stolen,  in  the  one  case  as  in  the 
other,  and  to  suspect  that  the  same  demon  was 
to  blame  for  both  robberies. 

The  Veda  itself  sustains  this  view.  It  is  cer- 
tain that  the  victory  of  Indra  over  Vritra  is  es- 
sentially the  same  as  his  victory  over  the  Panis. 
Vritra,  the  storm-fiend,  is  himself  called  one  of 
the  Panis ;  yet  the  latter  are  uniformly  repre- 
sented as  night-demons.  They  steal  Indra's 
golden  cattle  and  drive  them  by  circuitous  paths 
to  a  dark  hiding-place  near  the  eastern  horizon. 
Indra  sends  the  dawn-nymph,  Sarama,  to  search 
for  them,  but  as  she  comes  within  sight  of  the 
dark  stable,  the  Panis  try  to  coax  her  to  stay 
with  them :  "  Let  us  make  thee  our  sister,  do 
not  go  away  again  ;  we  will  give  thee  part  of 
the  cows,  O  darling."1  According  to  the  text 
of  this  hymn,  she  scorns  their  solicitations,  but 
elsewhere  the  fickle  dawn-nymph  is  said  to  co- 
quet with  the  powers  of  darkness.  She  does 
not  care  for  their  cows,  but  will  take  a  drink  of 
milk,  if  they  will  be  so  good  as  to  get  it  for 
her.  Then  she  goes  back  and  tells  Indra  that 
she  cannot  find  the  cows.  He  kicks  her  with 
his  foot,  and  she  runs  back  to  the  Panis,  fol- 
lowed by  the  god,  who  smites  them  all  with  his 
unerring  arrows  and  recovers  the  stolen  light. 
From  such  a  simple  beginning  as  this  has  been 

1  Max  Miiller,  Science  of  Language,  ii.  484. 
'63 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

deduced  the  Greek  myth  of  the  faithlessness  of 
Helen.1 

These  night-demons,  the  Panis,  though  not 
apparently  regarded  with  any  strong  feeling  of 
moral  condemnation,  are  nevertheless  hated  and 
dreaded  as  the  authors  of  calamity.  They  not 
only  steal  the  daylight,  but  they  parch  the  earth 
and  wither  the  fruits,  and  they  slay  vegetation 
during  the  winter  months.  As  C<ecius,  the 
"darkener,"  became  ultimately  changed  into 
CacuSj  the  "  evil  one,"  so  the  name  of  Vritra> 
the  "  concealer,"  the  most  famous  of  the  Panis, 
was  gradually  generalized  until  it  came  to  mean 
"enemy,"  like  the  English  word^dW,  and  be- 
gan to  be  applied  indiscriminately  to  any  kind 
of  evil  spirit.  In  one  place  he  is  called  Adeva, 
the  "  enemy  of  the  gods,"  an  epithet  exactly 
equivalent  to  the  Persian  dev. 

In  the  Zendavesta  the  myth  of  Hercules 
and  Cacus  has  given  rise  to  a  vast  system  of 
theology.  The  fiendish  Panis  are  concentrated 
in  Ahriman  or  Anro-mainyas,  whose  name  sig- 
nifies the  "  spirit  of  darkness,"  and  who  carries 
on  a  perpetual  warfare  against  Ormuzd  or 

1  As  Max  Miiller  observes,  '«  Apart  from  all  mythologi- 
cal considerations,  Sarama  in  Sanskrit  is  the  same  word  as 
Helena  in  Greek."  Op.  fit.  p.  490.  The  names  corre- 
spond phonetically  letter  for  letter,  as  Surya  corresponds  to 
Helios,  Sarameyas  to  Hermeias,  and  Aharyu  to  Achilleus. 
Miiller  has  plausibly  suggested  that  Paris  similarly  answers 
to  the  Panis. 

164 


LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS 

Ahuramazda,  who  is  described  by  his  ordinary 
surname,  Spentomainyas,  as  the  "  spirit  of 
light."  The  ancient  polytheism  here  gives 
'  place  to  a  refined  dualism,  not  very  different 
from  what  in  many  Christian  sects  has  passed 
current  as  monotheism.  Ahriman  is  the  arch- 
fiend, who  struggles  with  Ormuzd,  not  for  the 
possession  of  a  herd  of  perishable  cattle,  but 
for  the  dominion  of  the  universe.  Ormuzd 
creates  the  world  pure  and  beautiful,  but  Ahri- 
man comes  after  him  and  creates  everything 
that  is  evil  in  it.  He  not  only  keeps  the  earth 
covered  with  darkness  during  half  of  the  day, 
and  withholds  the  rain  and  destroys  the  crops, 
but  he  is  the  author  of  all  evil  thoughts  and 
the  instigator  of  all  wicked  actions.  Like  his 
progenitor  Vritra  and  his  offspring  Satan,  he  is 
represented  under  the  form  of  a  serpent ;  and 
the  destruction  which  ultimately  awaits  these 
demons  is  also  in  reserve  for  him.  Eventually 
there  is  to  be  a  day  of  reckoning,  when  Ahriman 
will  be  bound  in  chains  and  rendered  power- 
less, or  when,  according  to  another  account,  he 
will  be  converted  to  righteousness,  as  Burns 
hoped  and  Origen  believed  would  be  the  case 
with  Satan. 

This  dualism  of  the  ancient  Persians  has 
exerted  a  powerful  influence  upon  the  develop- 
ment of  Christian  theology.  The  very  idea  of 
an  archfiend  Satan,  which  Christianity  received 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

from  Judaism,  seems  either  to  have  been  sug- 
gested by  the  Persian  Ahriman,  or  at  least  to 
have  derived  its  principal  characteristics  from 
that  source.  There  is  no  evidence  that  the 
Jews,  previous  to  the  Babylonish  captivity, 
possessed  the  conception  of  a  Devil  as  the  au- 
thor of  all  evil.  In  the  earlier  books  of  the 
Old  Testament  Jehovah  is  represented  as  dis- 
pensing with  his  own  hand  the  good  and  the 
evil,  like  the  Zeus  of  the  Iliad.1  The  story  of 
the  serpent  in  Eden  —  an  Aryan  story  in  every 
particular,  which  has  crept  into  the  Pentateuch 
—  is  not  once  alluded  to  in  the  Old  Testament; 
and  the  notion  of  Satan  as  the  author  of  evil 
appears  only  in  the  later  books,  composed  after 
the  Jews  had  come  into  close  contact  with  Per- 
sian ideas.2  In  the  Book  of  Job,  as  Reville 

1  "I  create  evil,"  Isaiah  xlv.  7  ;  "Shall  there  be  evil 
in  the  city,  and  the  Lord  hath  not  done  it  ?  "  Amos  iii.  6  ; 
cf.  Iliad,  xxiv.  527,  and  contrast  2  Samuel  xxiv.  I  with 
I  Chronicles  xxi.  I. 

a  Nor  is  there  any  ground  for  believing  that  the  serpent  in 
the  Eden  myth  is  intended  for  Satan.  The  identification  is 
entirely  the  work  of  modern  dogmatic  theology,  and  is  due, 
naturally  enough,  to  the  habit,  so  common  alike  among  the- 
ologians and  laymen,  of  reasoning  about  the  Bible  as  if  it 
were  a  single  book,  and  not  a  collection  of  writings  of  differ- 
ent ages  and  of  very  different  degrees  of  historic  authenticity. 
In  a  future  work,  entitled  "  Aryana  Vaedjo,"  I  hope  to 
examine,  at  considerable  length,  this  interesting  myth  of  the 
garden  of  Eden.  [It  is  to  be  suspected  that  chapters  iii.-v. 

1 66 


LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS 

observes,  Satan  is  "  still  a  member  of  the  celes- 
tial court,  being  one  of  the  sons  of  the  Elohim, 
but  having  as  his  special  office  the  continual 
accusation  of  men,  and  having  become  so  sus- 
picious by  his  practice  as  public  accuser  that  he 
believes  in  the  virtue  of  no  one,  and  always 
presupposes  interested  motives  for  the  purest 
manifestations  of  human  piety."  In  this  way 
the  character  of  this  angel  became  injured,  and 
he  became  more  and  more  an  object  of  dread 
and  dislike  to  men,  until  the  later  Jews  ascribed 
to  him  all  the  attributes  of  Ahriman,  and  in 
this  singularly  altered  shape  he  passed  into 
Christian  theology.  Between  the  Satan  of  the 
Book  of  Job  and  the  mediaeval  Devil  the  meta- 
morphosis is  as  great  as  that  which  degraded 
the  stern  Erinys,  who  brings  evil  deeds  to  light, 
into  the  demon-like  Fury  who  torments  wrong- 
doers in  Tartarus  ;  and,  making  allowance  for 
difference  of  circumstances,  the  process  of  de- 
gradation has  been  very  nearly  the  same  in  the 
two  cases. 

The  mediaeval  conception  of  the  Devil  is  a 
grotesque  compound  of  elements  derived  from 
all  the  systems  of  pagan  mythology  which 
Christianity  superseded.  He  is  primarily  a  re- 
bellious angel,  expelled  from  heaven  along  with 
his  followers,  like  the  giants  who  attempted  to 

of  Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist  are  fragments  of  Aryana 
Vaedjo.] 

I67 


•  MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

scale  Olympos,  and  like  the  impious  Efreets  of 
Arabian  legend  who  revolted  against  the  bene- 
ficent rule  of  Solomon.  As  the  serpent  prince 
of  the  outer  darkness,  he  retains  the  old  charac- 
teristics of  Vritra,  Ahi,  Typhon,  and  Echidna. 
As  the  black  dog  which  appears  behind  the 
stove  in  Dr.  Faust's  study,  he  is  the  classic  hell- 
hound Kerberos,  the  Vedic  £arvara.  From  the 
sylvan  deity  Pan  he  gets  his  goat-like  body, 
his  horns  and  cloven  hoofs.  Like  the  wind-god 
Orpheus,  to  whose  music  the  trees  bent  their 
heads  to  listen,  he  is  an  unrivalled  player  on  the 
bagpipes.  Like  those  other  wind-gods  the  psy- 
chopomp  Hermes  and  the  wild  huntsman  Odin, 
he  is  the  prince  of  the  powers  of  the  air  :  his 
flight  through  the  midnight  sky,  attended  by 
his  troop  of  witches  mounted  on  their  brooms, 
which  sometimes  break  the  boughs  and  sweep 
the  leaves  from  the  trees,  is  the  same  as  the  fu- 
rious chase  of  the  Erlking  Odin  or  the  Burckar 
Vittikab.  He  is  Dionysos,  who  causes  red  wine 
to  flow  from  the  dry  wood,  alike  on  the  deck 
of  the  Tyrrhenian  pirate-ship  and  in  Auerbach's 
cellar  at  Leipzig.  He  is  Wayland,  the  smith, 
a  skilful  worker  in  metals  and  a  wonderful  ar- 
chitect, like  the  classic  fire-god  Hephaistos  or 
Vulcan ;  and,  like  Hephaistos,  he  is  lame  from 
the  effects  of  his  fall  from  heaven.  From  the 
lightning-god  Thor  he  obtains  his  red  beard, 
his  pitchfork,  and  his  power  over  thunderbolts ; 
168 


LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS 

and,  like  that  ancient  deity,  he  is  in  the  habit 
of  beating  his  wjfe  behind  the  door  when  the 
rain  falls  during  sunshine.  Finally,  he  takes 
a  hint  from  Poseidon  and  from  the  swan- 
maidens,  and  appears  as  a  water  imp  or  Nixy 
(whence  probably  his  name  of  Old  Nick),  and 
as  the  Davy  (deva)  whose  "  locker  "  is  situated 
at  the  bottom  of  the  sea.1 

According  to  the  Scotch  divines  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  the  Devil  is  a  learned  scholar 
•  and  profound  thinker.  Having  profited  by  six 
thousand  years  of  intense  study  and  meditation, 
he  has  all  science,  philosophy,  and  theology  at 
his  tongue's  end  ;  and,  as  his  skill  has  increased 
with  age,  he  is  far  more  than  a  match  for  mor- 
tals in  cunning.2  Such,  however,  is  not  the  view 
taken  by  mediaeval  mythology,  which  usually  re- 
presents his  stupidity  as  equalling  his  malignity. 
The  victory  of  Hercules  over  Cacus  is  repeated 
in  a  hundred  mediaeval  legends  in  which  the 
Devil  is  overreached  and  made  a  laughing-stock. 
The  germ  of  this  notion  may  be  found  in  the 

1  For  further  particulars  see  Cox,  Mythology  of  the  Aryan 
Nations,  vol.  ii.  pp.  358,  366  ;  to  which  I  am  indebted  for 
several    of  the    details    here    given.       Compare    Welcker, 
Griechische  Gotterlehre,  i.  66 1,  seq. 

2  Many    amusing    passages    from  Scotch   theologians  are 
cited   in   Buckle's  History   of  Civilization,  vol.  ii.  p.  368. 
The  same  belief  is  implied   in  the  quaint   monkish  tale  of 
«'  Celestinus  and  the  Miller's  Horse."     See  Tales  from  the 
Gesta  Romanorum,  p.  134. 

169 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

blinding  of  Polyphemos  by  Odysseus,  which  is 
itself  a  victory  of  the  sun-hero  over  the  night- 
demon,  and  which  curiously  reappears  in  a 
Middle- Age  story  narrated  by  Mr.  Cox.  "The 
Devil  asks  a  man  who  is  moulding  buttons 
what  he  may  be  doing ;  and  when  the  man  an- 
swers that  he  is  moulding  eyes,  asks  him  further 
whether  he  can  give  him  a  pair  of  new  eyes.  He 
is  told  to  come  again  another  day ;  and  when 
he  makes  his  appearance  accordingly,  the  man 
tells  him  that  the  operation  cannot  be  performed 
rightly  unless  he  is  first  tightly  bound  with  his 
back  fastened  to  a  bench.  While  he  is  thus 
pinioned  he  asks  the  man's  name.  The  reply  is 
Issi  ('himself').  When  the  lead  is  melted,  the 
Devil  opens  his  eyes  wide  to  receive  the  deadly 
stream.  As  soon  as  he  is  blinded,  he  starts  up 
in  agony,  bearing  away  the  bench  to  which  he 
had  been  bound ;  and  when  some  workpeople 
in  the  fields  ask  him  who  had  thus  treated  him, 
his  answer  is,  f  Issi  teggi '  (c  Self  did  it ').  With 
a  laugh  they  bid  him  lie  on  the  bed  which  he 
has  made  :  f  selbst  gethan,  selbst  habe.'  The 
Devil  died  of  his  new  eyes,  and  was  never  seen 
again." 

In  his  attempts  to  obtain  human  souls  the 
Devil  is  frequently  foiled  by  the  superior  cun- 
ning of  mortals.  Once,  he  agreed  to  build  a 
house  for  a  peasant  in  exchange  for  the  peas- 
ant's soul ;  but  if  the  house  were  not  finished 
170 


LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS 

before  cockcrow,  the  contract  was  to  be  null  and 
void.  Just  as  the  Devil  was  putting  on  the  last 
tile  the  man  imitated  a  cockcrow  and  waked 
up  all  the  roosters  in  the  neighbourhood,  so 
that  the  fiend  had  his  labour  for  his  pains.  A 
merchant  of  Louvain  once  sold  himself  to  the 
Devil,  who  heaped  upon  him  all  manner  of 
riches  for  seven  years,  and  then  came  to  get 
him.  The  merchant  "  took  the  Devil  in  a 
friendly  manner  by  the  hand  and,  as  it  was  just 
evening,  said,  f  Wife,  bring  a  light  quickly  for 
the  gentleman.'  *  That  is  not  at  all  necessary,' 
said  the  Devil ;  f  I  am  merely  come  to  fetch 
you.'  *  Yes,  yes,  that  I  know  very  well,'  said 
the  merchant,  f  only  just  grant  me  the  time  till 
this  little  candle-end  is  burnt  out,  as  I  have  a 
few  letters  to  sign  and  to  put  on  my  coat.' 
f  Very  well,'  said  the  Devil,  '  but  only  till  the 
candle  is  burnt  out.'  l  Good,'  said  the  mer- 
chant, and  going  into  the  next  room,  ordered 
the  maid-servant  to  place  a  large  cask  full  of 
water  close  to  a  very  deep  pit  that  was  dug  in 
the  garden.  The  men-servants  also  carried,  each 
of  them,  a  cask  to  the  spot ;  and  when  all  was 
done,  they  were  ordered  each  to  take  a  shovel, 
and  stand  round  the  pit.  The  merchant  then 
returned  to  the  Devil,  who  seeing  that  not  more 
than  about  an  inch  of  candle  remained,  said, 
laughing,  c  Now  get  yourself  ready,  it  will  soon 
be  burnt  out.'  c  That  I  see,  and  am  content ; 
171 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

but  I  shall  hold  you  to  your  word,  and  stay  till 
it  is  burnt.'  '  Of  course,'  answered  the  Devil ; 
'  I  stick  to  my  word.'  c  It  is  dark  in  the  next 
room,'  continued  the  merchant,  ( but  I  must 
find  the  great  book  with  clasps,  so  let  me  just 
take  the  light  for  one  moment.'  '  Certainly,' 
said  the  Devil,  c  but  I  '11  go  with  you.'  He 
did  so,  and  the  merchant's  trepidation  was  now 
on  the  increase.  When  in  the  next  room  he 
said  on  a  sudden,  '  Ah,  now  I  know,  the  key 
is  in  the  garden  door.'  And  with  these  words 
he  ran  out  with  the  light  into  the  garden,  and 
before  the  Devil  could  overtake  him,  threw  it 
into  the  pit,  and  the  men  and  the  maids  poured 
water  upon  it,  and  then  filled  up  the  hole  with 
earth.  Now  came  the  Devil  into  the  garden 
and  asked,  f Well,  did  you  get  the  key?  and 
how  is  it  with  the  candle  ?  where  is  it  ?  '  *  The 
candle  ? '  said  the  merchant.  f  Yes,  the  candle.' 
'  Ha,  ha,  ha !  it  is  not  yet  burnt  out,'  answered 
the  merchant,  laughing,  f  and  will  not  be  burnt 
out  for  the  next  fifty  years  ;  it  lies  there  a  hun- 
dred fathoms  deep  in  the  earth.'  When  the 
Devil  heard  this  he  screamed  awfully,  and  went 
ofF  with  a  most  intolerable  stench."  * 

One  day  a  fowler,  who  was  a  terrible  bungler 

and  could  n't  hit  a  bird  at  a  dozen  paces,  sold 

his  soul  to  the  Devil  in  order  to  become  a  Frei- 

schiitz.    The  fiend  was  to  come  for  him  in  seven 

1  Thorpe,  Northern  Mythology,  vol.  ii.  p.  258. 

172 


LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS 

years,  but  must  be  always  able  to  name  the  an- 
imal at  which  he  was  shooting,  otherwise  the 
compact  was  to  be  nullified.  After  that  day  the 
fowler  never  missed  his  aim,  and  never  did  a 
fowler  command  such  wages.  When  the  seven 
years  were  out  the  fowler  told  all  these  things 
to  his  wife,  and  the  twain  hit  upon  an  expedient 
for  cheating  the  Devil.  The  woman  stripped 
herself,  daubed  her  whole  body  with  molasses, 
and  rolled  herself  up  in  a  feather-bed,  cut  open 
for  this  purpose.  Then  she  hopped  and  skipped 
about  the  field  where  her  husband  stood  parley- 
ing with  Old  Nick.  "  There  's  a  shot  for  you, 
fire  away,"  said  the  Devil.  "  Of  course  I  '11  fire, 
but  do  you  first  tell  me  what  kind  of  a  bird  it 
is  ;  else  our  agreement  is  cancelled,  Old  Boy." 
There  was  no  help  for  it ;  the  Devil  had  to 
own  himself  nonplussed,  and  off  he  fled,  with  a 
whiff  of  brimstone  which  nearly  suffocated  the 
Freischiitz  and  his  good  woman.1 

In  the  legend  of  Gambrinus,  the  fiend  is  still 
more  ingloriously  defeated.  Gambrinus  was  a 
fiddler,  who,  being  jilted  by  his  sweetheart, 

1  Thorpe,  Northern  Mythology,  vol.  ii.  p.  259.  In  the 
Norse  story  of  "  Not  a  Pin  to  choose  between  them,"  the 
old  woman  is  in  doubt  as  to  her  own  identity,  on  waking  up 
after  the  butcher  has  dipped  her  in  a  tar-barrel  and  rolled  her 
on  a  heap  of  feathers  ;  and  when  Tray  barks  at  her,  her  per- 
plexity is  as  great  as  the  Devil's  when  fooled  by  the  Frei- 
schiatz.  See  Dasent,  Norse  Tales,  p.  199. 

173 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

went  out  into  the  woods  to  hang  himself.  As 
he  was  sitting  on  the  bough,  with  the  cord  about 
his  neck,  preparatory  to  taking  the  fatal  plunge, 
suddenly  a  tall  man  in  a  green  coat  appeared 
before  him,  and  offered  his  services.  He  might 
become  as  wealthy  as  he  liked,  and  make  his 
sweetheart  burst  with  vexation  at  her  own  folly, 
but  in  thirty  years  he  must  give  up  his  soul  to 
Beelzebub.  The  bargain  was  struck,  for  Gam- 
brinus  thought  thirty  years  a  long  time  to  enjoy 
one's  self  in,  and  perhaps  the  Devil  might  get 
him  in  any  event ;  as  well  be  hung  for  a  sheep 
as  for  a  lamb.  Aided  by  Satan,  he  invented 
chiming  bells  and  lager  beer,  for  both  of  which 
achievements  his  name  is  held  in  grateful  re- 
membrance by  the  Teuton.  No  sooner  had  the 
Holy  Roman  Emperor  quaffed  a  gallon  or  two 
of  the  new  beverage,  than  he  made  Gambrinus 
Duke  of  Brabant  and  Count  of  Flanders,  and 
then  it  was  the  fiddler's  turn  to  laugh  at  the 
discomfiture  of  his  old  sweetheart.  Gambrinus 
kept  clear  of  women,  says  the  legend,  and  so 
lived  in  peace.  For  thirty  years  he  sat  beneath 
his  belfry  with  the  chimes,  meditatively  drink- 
ing beer  with  his  nobles  and  burghers  around 
him.  Then  Beelzebub  sent  Jocko,  one  of  his 
imps,  with  orders  to  bring  back  Gambrinus  be- 
fore midnight.  But  Jocko  was,  like  Swiveller's 
Marchioness,  ignorant  of  the  taste  of  beer,  never 
having  drunk  of  it  even  in  a  sip,  and  the  Flem- 
174 


LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS 

ish  schoppen  were  too  much  for  him.  He  fell 
into  a  drunken  sleep,  and  did  not  wake  up  until 
noon  next  day,  at  which  he  was  so  mortified 
that  he  had  not  the  face  to  go  back  to  hell  at 
all.  So  Gambrinus  lived  on  tranquilly  for  a  cen- 
tury or  two,  and  drank  so  much  beer  that  he 
turned  into  a  beer-barrel.1 

The  character  of  gullibility  attributed  to  the 
Devil  in  these  legends  is  probably  derived  from 
the  Trolls,  or  "  night-folk,"  of  Northern  my- 
thology. In  most  respects  the  Trolls  resemble 
the  Teutonic  elves  and  fairies,  and  the  Jinn  or 
Efreets  of  the  Arabian  Nights ;  but  their  ped- 
igree is  less  honourable.  The  fairies,  or  "  White 
Ladies,"  were  not  originally  spirits  of  darkness, 
but  were  nearly  akin  to  the  swan-maidens, 
dawn-nymphs,  and  dryads,  and  though  their 
wrath  was  to  be  dreaded,  they  were  not  malig- 
nant by  nature.  Christianity,  having  no  place 
for  such  beings,  degraded  them  into  something 
like  imps  ;  the  most  charitable  theory  being  that 
they  were  angels  who  had  remained  neutral 
during  Satan's  rebellion,  in  punishment  for 
which  Michael  expelled  them  from  heaven,  but 
has  left  their  ultimate  fate  unannounced  until 
the  day  of  judgment.  The  Jinn  appear  to  have 
been  similarly  degraded  on  the  rise  of  Moham- 
medanism. But  the  Trolls  were  always  imps 
of  darkness.  They  are  descended  from  the  J6- 

1  See  Deulin,  Contes  (Tun  Buveur  de  Biere,  pp.  3-29. 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

tuns,  or  Frost-Giants  of  Northern  paganism, 
and  they  correspond  to  the  Panis,  or  night- 
demons  of  the  Veda.  In  many  Norse  tales  they 
are  said  to  burst  when  they  see  the  risen  sun.1 
They  eat  human  flesh,  are  ignorant  of  the  sim- 
plest arts,  and  live  in  the  deepest  recesses  of  the 
forest  or  in  caverns  on  the  hillside,  where  the 
sunlight  never  penetrates.  Some  of  these  char- 
acteristics may  very  likely  have  been  suggested 
by  reminiscences  of  the  primeval  Lapps,  from 
whom  the  Aryan  invaders  wrested  the  domin- 
ion of  Europe.2  In  some  legends  the  Trolls  are 
represented  as  an  ancient  race  of  beings  now 
superseded  by  the  human  race.  "  '  What  sort 
of  an  earthworm  is  this  ? '  said  one  Giant  to 
another,  when  they  met  a  man  as  they  walked. 
'  These  are  the  earthworms  that  will  one  day 
eat  us  up,  brother,'  answered  the  other;  and 
soon  both  .Giants  left  that  part  of  Germany." 
cc  '  See  what  pretty  playthings,  mother  ! '  cries 
the  Giant's  daughter,  as  she  unties  her  apron, 
and  shows  her  a  plough,  and  horses,  and  a  peas- 
ant. f  Back  with  them  this  instant,'  cries  the 
mother  in  wrath,  '  and  put  them  down  as  care- 
fully as  you  can,  for  these  playthings  can  do  our 

1  Dasent,   Popular  Tales  from  the  Norse,  No.  III.  and 
No.  XLII. 

2  See  Dasent' s  Introduction,  p.  cxxxix  ;  Campbell,  Talei 
if  the  West  Highlands,  vol.  iv.  p.  344  j  and  Williams,  /»- 
dian  Epic  Poetry,  p.  10. 

176 


LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS 

race  great  harm,  and  when  these  come  we  must 
budge.'  "  Very  naturally  the  primitive  Teuton, 
possessing  already  the  conception  of  night-de- 
mons, would  apply  it  to  these  men  of  the  woods 
whom  even  to  this  day  his  uneducated  descend- 
ants believe  to  be  sorcerers,  able  to  turn  men 
into  wolves.  But  whatever  contributions  his- 
torical fact  may  have  added  to  his  character,  the 
Troll  is  originally  a  creation  of  mythology,  like 
Polyphemos,  whom  he  resembles  in  his  uncouth 
person,  his  cannibal  appetite,  and  his  lack  of 
wit.  His  ready  gullibility  is  shown  in  the  story 
of  "  Boots  who  ate  a  Match  with  the  Troll." 
Boots,  the  brother  of  Cinderella,  and  the  coun- 
terpart alike  of  Jack  the  Giant-Killer  and  of 
Odysseus,  is  the  youngest  of  three  brothers  who 
go  into  a  forest  to  cut  wood.  The  Troll  appears 
and  threatens  to  kill  any  one  who  dares  to  med- 
dle with  his  timber.  The  elder  brothers  flee, 
but  Boots  puts  on  a  bold  face.  He  pulled  a 
cheese  out  of  his  scrip  and  squeezed  it  till  the 
whey  began  to  spurt  out.  "  Hold  your  tongue, 
you  dirty  Troll,"  said  he,  "  or  I  '11  squeeze  you 
as  I  squeeze  this  stone."  So  the  Troll  grew 
timid  and  begged  to  be  spared,1  and  Boots  let 

1  "  A  Leopard  was  returning  home  from  hunting  on  one 
occasion,  when  he  lighted  on  the  kraal  of  a  Ram.  Now 
the  Leopard  had  never  seen  a  Ram  before,  and  accordingly, 
approaching  submissively,  he  said,  '  Good-day,  friend  !  what 
may  your  name  be  ?  '  The  other,  in  his  gruff  voice,  and 
177 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

him  off  on  condition  that  he  would  hew  all  day 
with  him.  They  worked  till  nightfall,  and  the 
Troll's  giant  strength  accomplished  wonders. 
Then  Boots  went  home  with  the  Troll,  having 
arranged  that  he  should  get  the  water  while  his 
host  made  the  fire.  When  they  reached  the  hut 
there  were  two  enormous  iron  pails,  so  heavy 
that  none  but  a  Troll  could  lift  them,  but  Boots 
was  not  to  be  frightened.  "  Bah  ! "  said  he. 
"  Do  you  suppose  I  am  going  to  get  water  in 
those  paltry  hand-basins  ?  Hold  on  till  I  go 
and  get  the  spring  itself!  "  "  Oh,  dear  !  "  said 
the  Troll,  "  I  'd  rather  not ;  do  you.  make  the 
fire,  and  I  '11  get  the  water."  Then  when  the 
soup  was  made,  Boots  challenged  his  new  friend 
to  an  eating  match ;  and  tying  his  scrip  in  front 
of  him,  proceeded  to  pour  soup  into  it  by  the 
ladleful.  By  and  by  the  giant  threw  down  his 
spoon  in  despair,  and  owned  himself  conquered. 
"  No,  no !  don't  give  it  up  yet,"  said  Boots, 
"just  cut  a  hole  in  your  stomach  like  this> 
and  you  can  eat  forever."  And  suiting  the  ac- 
tion to  the  words,  he  ripped  open  his  scrip.  So 
the  silly  Troll  cut  himself  open  and  died,  and 
Boots  carried  off  all  his  gold  and  silver. 

Once  there  was  a  Troll  whose  name  was  Wind- 
striking  his  breast  with  his  fore  foot,  said,  <  I  am  a  Ram;  who 
are  you?'  'A  Leopard,'  answered  the  other,  more  dead 
than  alive  ;  and  then,  taking  leave  of  the  Ram,  he  ran  home 
as  fast  as  he  could."  Bleek,  Hottentot  Fables,  p.  24. 
I78 


LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS 

and-Weather,  and  Saint  Olaf  hired  him  to  build 
a  church.  If  the  church  were  completed  within 
a  certain  specified  time,  the  Troll  was  to  get  pos- 
session of  Saint  Olaf.  The  saint  then  planned 
such  a  stupendous  edifice  that  he  thought  the 
giant  would  be  forever  building  it ;  but  the  work 
went  on  briskly,  and  at  the  appointed  day  no- 
thing remained  but  to  finish  the  point  of  the 
spire.  In  his  consternation  Olaf  rushed  about 
until  he  passed  by  the  Troll's  den,  when  he 
heard  the  giantess  telling  her  children  that  their 
father,  Wind-and-Weather,  was  finishing  his 
church,  and  would  be  home  to-morrow  with 
Saint  Olaf.  So  the  saint  ran  back  to  the  church 
and  bawled  out, "  Hold  on,  Wind-and-Weather, 
your  spire  is  crooked ! "  Then  the  giant  tum- 
bled down  from  thereof  and  broke  into  a  thou- 
sand pieces.  As  in  the  cases  of  the  Mara  and 
the  werewolf,  the  enchantment  was  at  an  end  as 
soon  as  the  enchanter  was  called  by  name. 

These  Trolls,  like  the  Arabian  Efreets,  had 
an  ugly  habit  of  carrying  off  beautiful  prin- 
cesses. This  is  strictly  in  keeping  with  their 
character  as  night-demons,  or  Panis.  In  the 
stories  of  Punchkin  and  the  Heartless  Giant,  the 
night-demon  carries  off  the  dawn-maiden  after 
having  turned  into  stone  her  solar  brethren.  But 
Boots,  or  Indra,  in  search  of  his  kinsfolk,  by 
and  by  arrives  at  the  Troll's  castle,  and  then  the 
dawn-nymph,  true  to  her  fickle  character,  cajoles 
179 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

the  Giant  and  enables  Boots  to  destroy  him. 
In  the  famous  myth  which  serves  as  the  basis 
for  the  Volsunga  Saga  and  the  Nibelungenlied, 
the  dragon  Fafnir  steals  the  Valkyrie  Brynhild 
and  keeps  her  shut  up  in  a  castle  on  the  Glis- 
tening Heath,  until  some  champion  shall  be 
found  powerful  enough  to  rescue  her.  The 
castle  is  as  hard  to  enter  as  that  of  the  Sleeping 
Beauty  ;  but  Sigurd,  the  Northern  Achilleus, 
riding  on  his  deathless  horse,  and  wielding  his 
resistless  sword  Gram,  forces  his  way  in,  slays 
Fafnir,  and  recovers  the  Valkyrie. 

In  the  preceding  paper  the  Valkyries  were 
shown  to  belong  to  the  class  of  cloud-maidens ; 
and  between  the  tale  of  Sigurd  and  that  of  Her- 
cules and  Cacus  there  is  no  difference,  save  that 
the  bright  sunlit  clouds  which  are  represented 
in  the  one  as  cows  are  in  the  other  represented 
as  maidens.  In  the  myth  of  the  Argonauts  they 
reappear  as  the  Golden  Fleece,  carried  to  the  far 
east  by  Phrixos  and  Helle,  who  are  themselves 
Niblungs,  or  "  Children  of  the  Mist "  (Nephele), 
,  and  there  guarded  by  a  dragon.  In  all  these 
myths  a  treasure  is  stolen  by  a  fiend  of  darkness, 
and  recovered  by  a  hero  of  light,  who  slays  the 
demon.  And  —  remembering  what  Scribe  said 
about  the  fewness  of  dramatic  types  —  I  believe 
we  are  warranted  in  asserting  that  all  the  stories 
of  lovely  women  held  in  bondage  by  monsters, 
and  rescued  by  heroes  who  perform  wonderful 
1 80 


LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS 

tasks,  such  as  Don  Quixote  burned  to  achieve, 
are  derived  ultimately  from  solar  myths,  like  the 
myth  of  Sigurd  and  Brynhild.  I  do  not  mean 
to  say  that  the  story-tellers  who  beguiled  their 
time  in  stringing  together  the  incidents  which 
make  up  these  legends  were  conscious  of  their 
solar  character.  They  did  not  go  to  work,  with 
malice  prepense,  to  weave  allegories  and  apo- 
logues. The  Greeks  who  first  told  the  story  of 
Perseus  and  Andromeda,  the  Arabians  who  de- 
vised the  tale  of  Codadad  and  his  brethren,  the 
Flemings  who  listened  over  their  beer  mugs  to 
the  adventures  of  Culotte-Verte,  were  not  think- 
ing of  sun-gods  or  dawn-maidens,  or  night- 
demons  ;  and  no  theory  of  mythology  can 
be  sound  which  implies  such  an  extravagance. 
Most  of  these  stories  have  lived  on  the  lips  of 
the  common  people  ;  and  illiterate  persons  are 
not  in  the  habit  of  allegorizing  in  the  style  of 
mediaeval  monks  or  rabbinical  commentators. 
But  what  has  been  amply  demonstrated  is,  that 
the  sun  and  the  clouds,  the  light  and  the  dark- 
ness, were  once  supposed  to  be  actuated  by  wills 
analogous  to  the  human  will ;  that  they  were 
personified  and  worshipped  or  propitiated  by 
sacrifice ;  and  that  their  doings  were  described 
in  language  which  applied  so  well  to  the  deeds 
of  human  or  quasi-human  beings  that  in  course 
of  time  its  primitive  purport  faded  from  recol- 
lection. No  competent  scholar  now  doubts  that 
181 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

the  myths  of  the  Veda  and  the  Edda  originated 
in  this  way,  for  philology  itself  shows  that  the 
names  employed  in  them  are  the  names  of  the 
great  phenomena  of  nature.  And  when  once  a 
few  striking  stories  had  thus  arisen,  —  when 
once  it  had  been  told  how  Indra  smote  the 
Panis,  and  how  Sigurd  rescued  Brynhild,  and 
how  Odysseus  blinded  the  Kyklops,  —  then  cer- 
tain mythic  or  dramatic  types  had  been  called 
into  existence  ;  and  to  these  types,  preserved 
in  the  popular  imagination,  future  stories  would 
inevitably  conform.  We  need,  therefore,  have 
no  hesitation  in  admitting  a  common  origin  for 
the  vanquished  Panis  and  the  outwitted  Troll 
or  Devil ;  we  may  securely  compare  the  legends 
of  St.  George  and  Jack  the  Giant-Killer  with  the 
myth  of  Indra  slaying  Vritra  ;  we  may  see  in 
the  invincible  Sigurd  the  prototype  of  many  a 
doughty  knight-errant  of  romance  ;  and  we  may 
learn  anew  the  lesson,  taught  with  fresh  empha- 
sis by  modern  scholarship,  that  in  the  deepest 
sense  there  is  nothing  new  under  the  sun. 

I  am  the  more  explicit  on  this  point,  because 
it  seems  to  me  that  the  unguarded  language  of 
many  students  of  mythology  is  liable  to  give 
rise  to  misapprehensions,  and  to  discredit  both 
the  method  which  they  employ  and  the  results 
which  they  have  obtained.  If  we  were  to  give 
full  weight  to  the  statements  which  are  some- 
times made,  we  should  perforce  believe  that 
182 


LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS 

primitive  men  had  nothing  to  do  but  to  pon- 
der about  the  sun  and  the  clouds,  and  to  worry 
themselves  over  the  disappearance  of  daylight. 
But  there  is  nothing  in  the  scientific  interpreta- 
tion of  myths  which  obliges  us  to  go  any  such 
length.  I  do  not  suppose  that  any  ancient  Ar- 
yan, possessed  of  good  digestive  powers  and 
endowed  with  sound  common-sense,  ever  lay 
awake  half  the  night  wondering  whether  the  sun 
would  come  back  again.1  The  child  and  the 
savage  believe  of  necessity  that  the  future  will 
resemble  the  past,  and  it  is  only  philosophy 
which  raises  doubts  on  the  subject.2  The  pre- 
dominance of  solar  legends  in  most  systems  of 
mythology  is  not  due  to  the  lack  of  "  that  Ti- 
tanic assurance  with  which  we  say,  the  sun  must 
rise  ;  "  3  nor  again  to  the  fact  that  the  phenom- 
ena of  day  and  night  are  the  most  striking  phe- 
nomena in  nature.  Eclipses  and  earthquakes 
and  floods  are  phenomena  of  the  most  terrible 

1  I  agree,  most  heartily,  with  Mr.    Mahaffy's  remarks, 
Prolegomena  to  Ancient  History,  p.  69. 

2  Sir  George  Grey  once  told  some  Australian  natives  about 
the  countries  within  the  arctic  circle  where  during  part  of  the 
year  the  sun  never  sets.      "  Their  astonishment  now  knew  no 
bounds.      *  Ah  !  that  must  be  another  sun,  not  the  same  as 
the  one  we  see  here,'  said  an  old  man  ;  and  in  spite  of  all 
my  arguments  to  the  contrary,  the  others  adopted  this  opin- 
ion."     Grey's  Journals,  i.  293,  cited  in  Tylor,  Early  His- 
tory of  Mankind,  p.  301. 

8  Max  Miiller,  Chips,  ii.  96. 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

and  astounding  kind,  and  they  have  all  gener- 
ated myths  ;  yet  their  contributions  to  folk-lore 
are  scanty  compared  with  those  furnished  by  the 
strife  between  the  day-god  and  his  enemies. 
The  sun-myths  have  been  so  prolific  because 
the  dramatic  types  to  which  they  have  given  rise 
are  of  surpassing  human  interest.  The  dragon 
who  swallows  the  sun  is  no  doubt  a  fearful 
personage ;  but  the  hero  who  toils  for  others, 
who  slays  hydra-headed  monsters,  and  dries  the 
tears  of  fair-haired  damsels,  and  achieves  success 
in  spite  of  incredible  obstacles,  is  a  being  with 
whom  we  can  all  sympathize,  and  of  whom  we 
never  weary  of  hearing. 

With  many  of  these  legends  which  present 
the  myth  of  light  and  darkness  in  its  most  at- 
tractive form,  the  reader  is  already  acquainted, 
and  it  is  needless  to  retail  stories  which  have 
been  told  over  and  over  again  in  books  which 
every  one  is  presumed  to  have  read.  I  will 
content  myself  with  a  weird  Irish  legend,  nar- 
rated by  Mr.  Patrick  Kennedy,1  in  which  we 
here  and  there  catch  glimpses  of  the  primitive 
mythical  symbols,  as  fragments  of  gold  are  seen 
gleaming  through  the  crystal  of  quartz. 

Long  before  the  Danes  ever  came  to  Ire- 
land, there  died  at  Muskerry  a  Sculloge,  or 
country  farmer,  who  by  dint  of  hard  work  and 
close  economy  had  amassed  enormous  wealth. 

1  Fictions  of  the  Irish  Celts,  pp.  255-270. 
184 


LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS 

His  only  son  did  not  resemble  him.  When  the 
young  Sculloge  looked  about  the  house,  the 
day  after  his  father's  death,  and  saw  the  big 
chests  full  of  gold  and  silver,  and  the  cup- 
boards shining  with  piles  of  sovereigns,  and  the 
old  stockings  stuffed  with  large  and  small  coin, 
he  said  to  himself,  "  Bedad,  how  shall  I  ever  be 
able  to  spend  the  likes  o'  that ! "  And  so  he 
drank,  and  gambled,  and  wasted  his  time  in 
hunting  and  horse-racing,  until  after  a  while 
he  found  the  chests  empty  and  the  cupboards 
poverty-stricken,  and  the  stockings  lean  and 
penniless.  Then  he  mortgaged  his  farmhouse 
and  gambled  away  all  the  money  he  got  for  it, 
and  then  he  bethought  him  that  a  few  hundred 
pounds  might  be  raised  on  his  mill.  But  when 
he  went  to  look  at  it,  he  found  "the  dam 
broken,  and  scarcely  a  thimbleful  of  water  in 
the  mill-race,  and  the  wheel  rotten,  and  the 
thatch  of  the  house  all  gone,  and  the  upper 
millstone  lying  flat  on  the  lower  one,  and  a  coat 
of  dust  and  mould  over  everything."  So  he 
made  up  his  mind  to  borrow  a  horse  and  take 
one  more  hunt  to-morrow  and  then  reform  his 
habits. 

As  he  was  returning  late  in  the  evening  from 
this  farewell  hunt,  passing  through  a  lonely 
glen  he  came  upon  an  old  man  playing  back- 
gammon, betting  on  his  left  hand  against  his 
right,  and  crying  and  cursing  because  the  right 
185 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

would  win.  "  Come  and  bet  with  me,"  said  he 
to  Sculloge.  "  Faith,  I  have  but  a  sixpence  in 
the  world,"  was  the  reply  ;  "  but,  if  you  like, 
I  '11  wager  that  on  the  right."  "  Done,"  said 
the  old  man,  who  was  a  Druid ;  "  if  you  win 
I  '11  give  you  a  hundred  guineas."  So  the  game 
was  played,  and  the  old  man,  whose  right  hand 
was  always  the  winner,  paid  over  the  guineas 
and  told  Sculloge  to  go  to  the  Devil  with 
them. 

Instead  of  following  this  bit  of  advice,  how- 
ever, the  young  farmer  went  home  and  began 
to  pay  his  debts,  and  next  week  he  went  to 
tKe  glen  and  won  another  game,  and  made  the 
Druid  rebuild  his  mill.  So  Sculloge  became 
prosperous  again,  and  by  and  by  he  tried  his 
luck  a  third  time,  and  won  a  game  played  for 
a  beautiful  wife.  The  Druid  sent  her  to  his 
house  the  next  morning  before  he  was  out  of 
bed,  and  hi«  servants  came  knocking  at  the 
door  and  crying,  "  Wake  up  !  wake  up  !  Master 
Sculloge,  there 's  a  young  lady  here  to  see  you." 
"  Bedad,  it 's  the  vanithee *  herself,"  said  Scul- 
loge ;  and  getting  up  in  a  hurry,  he  spent  three 
quarters  of  an  hour  in  dressing  himself.  At  last 
he  went  downstairs,  and  there  on  the  sofa  was 
the  prettiest  lady  ever  seen  in  Ireland  !  Natu- 
rally, Sculloge's  heart  beat  fast  and  his  voice 

1  A  corruption  of  Gaelic  bhan  a  teaigh,  "  lady  of  the 
house." 

186 


LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS 

trembled,  as  he  begged  the  lady's  pardon  for 
this  Druidic  style  of  wooing,  and  besought  her 
not  to  feel  obliged  to  stay  with  him  unless  she 
really  liked  him.  But  the  young  lady,  who  was 
a  king's  daughter  from  a  far  country,  was  won- 
drously  charmed  with  the  handsome  farmer,  and 
so  well  did  they  get  along  that  the  priest  was 
sent  for  without  further  delay,  and  they  were 
^married  before  sundown.  Sabina  was  the  vani- 
thee's  name  ;  and  she  warned  her  husband  to 
have  no  more  dealings  with  Lassa  Buaicht,  the 
old  man  of  the  glen.  So  for  a  while  all  went 
happily,  and  the  Druidic  bride  was  as  good  as 
she  was  beautiful.  But  by  and  by  Sculloge  be- 
gan to  think  he  was  not  earning  money  fast 
enough.  He  could  not  bear  to  see  his  wife's 
white  hands  soiled  with  work,  and  thought  it 
would  be  a  fine  thing  if  he  could  only  afford  to 
keep  a  few  more  servants,  and  drive  about  with 
Sabina  in  an  elegant  carriage^  and  see  her 
clothed  in  silk  and  adorned  with  jewels. 

"  I  will  play  one  more  game  and  set  the  stakes 
high,"  said  Sculloge  to  himself  one  evening,  as 
he  sat  pondering  over  these  things ;  and  so, 
without  consulting  Sabina,  he  stole  away  to  the 
glen,  and  played  a  game  for  ten  thousand 
guineas.  But  the  evil  Druid  was  now  ready  to 
pounce  on  his  prey,  and  he  did  not  play  as 
of  old.  Sculloge  broke  into  a  cold  sweat  with 
agony  and  terror  as  he  saw  the  left  hand  win  ! 
187  - 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

Then  the  face  of  Lassa  Buaicht  grew  dark  and 
stern,  and  he  laid  on  Sculloge  the  curse  which 
is  laid  upon  the  solar  hero  in  misfortune,  that 
he  should  never  sleep  twice  under  the  same 
roof,  or  ascend  the  couch  of  the  dawn-nymph, 
his  wife,  until  he  should  have  procured  and 
brought  to  him  the  sword  of  light.  When 
Sculloge  reached  home,  more  dead  than  alive, 
he  saw  that  his  wife  knew  all.  Bitterly  they^ 
wept  together,  but  she  told  him  that  with  cour- 
age all  might  be  set  right.  She  gave  him  a 
Druidic  horse,  which  bore  him  swiftly  over  land 
and  sea,  like  the  enchanted  steed  of  the  Arabian 
Nights,  until  he  reached  the  castle  of  his  wife's 
father,  who,  as  Sculloge  now  learned,  was  a  good 
Druid,  the  brother  of  the  evil  Lassa  Buaicht. 
This  good  Druid  told  him  that  the  sword  of 
light  was  kept  by  a  third  brother,  the  power- 
ful magician,  Fiach  O'Duda,  who  dwelt  in  an 
enchanted  castle,  which  many  brave  heroes  had 
tried  to  enter,  but  the  dark  sorcerer  had  slain 
them  all.  Three  high  walls  surrounded  the 
castle,  and  many  had  scaled  the  first  of  these, 
but  none  had  ever  returned  alive.  But  Scul- 
loge was  not  to  be  daunted,  and,  taking  from 
his  father-in-law  a  black  steed,  he  set  out  for 
the  fortress  of  Fiach  O'Duda.  Over  the  first 
high  wall  nimbly  leaped  the  magic  horse,  and 
Sculloge  called  aloud  on  the  Druid  to  come  out 
and  surrender  his  sword.  Then  came  out  a 
188 


LIGHT  AND  DARKNESS 

tall,  dark  man,  with  coal-black  eyes  and  hair  and 
melancholy  visage,  and  made  a  furious  sweep 
at  Sculloge  with  the  naming  blade.  But  the 
Druidic  beast  sprang  back  over  the  wall  in  the 
twinkling  of  an  eye  and  rescued  his  rider,  leav- 
ing, however,  his  tail  behind  in  the  courtyard. 
Then  Sculloge  returned  in  triumph  to  his 
father-in-law's  palace,  and  the  night  was  spent 
in  feasting  and  revelry. 

Next  day  Sculloge  rode  out  on  a  white  horse, 
and  when  he  got  to  Fiach's  castle,  he  saw  the 
first  wall  lying  in  rubbish.  He  leaped  the 
second,  and  the  same  scene  occurred  as  the  day 
before,  save  that  the  horse  escaped  unharmed. 

The  third  day  Sculloge  went  out  on  foot, 
with  a  harp  like  that  of  Orpheus  in  his  hand, 
and  as  he  swept  its  strings  the  grass  bent  to 
listen  and  the  trees  bowed  their  heads.  The 
castle  walls  all  lay  in  ruins,  and  Sculloge  made 
his  way  unhindered  to  the  upper  room,  where 
Fiach  lay  in  Druidic  slumber,  lulled  by  the  harp. 
He  seized  the  sword  of  light,  which  was  hung  by 
the  chimney  sheathed  in  a  dark  scabbard,  and 
making  the  best  of  his  way  back  to  the  good 
king's  palace,  mounted  his  wife's  steed,  and 
scoured  over  land  and  sea  until  he  found  him- 
self in  the  gloomy  glen  where  Lassa  Buaicht 
was  still  crying  and  cursing  and  betting  on  his 
left  hand  against  his  right. 

"  Here,  treacherous  fiend,  take  your  sword 
189 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

of  light !  "  shouted  Sculloge  in  tones  of  thun- 
der ;  and  as  he  drew  it  from  its  sheath  the  whole 
valley  was  lighted  up  as  with  the  morning  sun, 
and  next  moment  the  head  of  the  wretched 
Druid  was  lying  at  his  feet,  and  his  sweet  wife, 
who  had  come  to  meet  him,  was  laughing  and 
crying  in  his  arms. 

November,  1870. 


190 


MYTHS  OF  THE  BARBARIC  WORLD 

THE  theory  of  mythology  set  forth  in 
the  four  preceding  papers,  and  illus- 
trated by  the  examination  of  numerous 
myths  relating  to  the  lightning,  the  storm-wind, 
the  clouds,  and  the  sunlight,  was  originally 
framed  with  reference  solely  to  the  mythic 
and  legendary  lore  of  the  Aryan  world.  The 
phonetic  identity  of  the  names  of  many  West- 
ern gods  and  heroes  with  the  names  of  those 
Vedic  divinities  which  are  obviously  the  person- 
ifications of  natural  phenomena,  suggested  the 
theory  which  philosophical  considerations  had 
already  foreshadowed  in  the  works  of  Hume 
arid  Comte,  and  which  the  exhaustive  analysis 
of  Greek,  Hindu,  Keltic,  and  Teutonic  legends 
has  amply  confirmed.  Let  us  now,  before  pro- 
ceeding to  the  consideration  of  barbaric  folk- 
lore, briefly  recapitulate  the  results  obtained  by 
modern  scholarship  working  strictly  within  the 
limits  of  the  Aryan  domain. 

In  the  first  place,  it  has  been  proved  once  for 
all  that  the  languages  spoken  by  the  Hindus, 
Persians,  Greeks,  Romans,  Kelts,  Slaves,  and 
191 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

Teutons  are  all  descended  from  a  single  ances- 
tral language,  the  old  Aryan,  in  the  same  sense 
that  French,  Italian,  and  Spanish  are  descended 
from  the  Latin.  And  from  this  undisputed  fact 
it  is  an  inevitable  inference  that  these  various 
races  contain,  along  with  other  elements,  a  race 
element  in  common,  due  to  their  Aryan  pedi- 
gree. That  the  Indo-European  races  are  wholly 
Aryan  is  very  improbable,  for  in  every  case  the 
countries  overrun  by  them  were  occupied  by  in- 
ferior races,  whose  blood  must  have  mingled  in 
varying  degrees  with  that  of  their  conquerors  ; 
but  that  every  Indo-European  people  is  in  great 
part  descended  from  a  common  Aryan  stock  is 
not  open  to  question. 

In  the  second  place,  along  with  a  common 
fund  of  moral  and  religious  ideas  and  of  legal 
and  ceremonial  observances,  we  find  these  kin- 
dred peoples  possessed  of  a  common  fund  of 
myths,  superstitions,  proverbs,  popular  poetry, 
and  household  legends.  The  Hindu  mother 
amuses  her  child  with  fairy-tales  which  often 
correspond,  even  in  minor  incidents,  with  stories 
in  Scottish  or  Scandinavian  nurseries  ;  and  she 
tells  them  in  words  which  are  phonetically  akin 
to  words  in  Swedish  and  Gaelic.  No  doubt 
many  of  these  stories  might  have  been  devised 
in  a  dozen  different  places  independently  of  each 
other ;  and  no  doubt  many  of  them  have  been 
transmitted  laterally  from  one  people  to  ano*ther ; 
192 


MYTHS  OF  THE  BARBARIC  WORLD 

but  a  careful  examination  shows  that  such  can- 
not have  been  the  case  with  the  great  majority 
of  legends  and  beliefs.  The  agreement  between 
two  such  stories,  for  instance,  as  those  of  Faith- 
ful John  and  Rama  and  Luxman  is  so  close  as 
to  make  it  incredible  that  they  should  have  been 
independently  fabricated,  while  the  points  of 
difference  are  so  important  as  to  make  it  ex- 
tremely improbable  that  the  one  was  ever  copied 
from  the  other.  Besides  which,  the  essential 
identity  of  such  myths  as  those  of  Sigurd  and 
Theseus,  or  of  Helena  and  Sarama,  carries  us 
back  historically  to  a  time  when  the  scattered 
Indo-European  tribes  had  not  yet  begun  to 
hold  commercial  and  intellectual  intercourse 
with  each  other,  and  consequently  could  not 
have  interchanged  their  epic  materials  or  their 
household  stories.  We  are  therefore  driven  to 
the  conclusion — which,  startling  as  it  may 
seem,  is  after  all  the  most  natural  and  plausible 
one  that  can  be  stated  —  that  the  Aryan  nations, 
which  have  inherited  from  a  common  ancestral 
stock  their  languages  and  their  customs,  have 
inherited  also  from  the  same  common  original 
their  fireside  legends.  They  have  preserved 
Cinderella  and  Punchkin  just  as  they  have  pre- 
served the  words  for  father  and  mother ',  ten  and 
twenty  ;  and  the  former  case,  though  more  im- 
posing to  the  imagination,  is  scientifically  no 
less  intelligible  than  the  latter. 
193 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

Thirdly,  it  has  been  shown  that  these  vener- 
able tales  may  be  grouped  in  a  few  pretty  well 
denned  classes ;  and  that  the  archetypal  myth 
of  each  class  —  the  primitive  story  in  conform- 
ity to  which  countless  subsequent  tales  have 
been  generated  —  was  originally  a  mere  descrip- 
tion of  physical  phenomena,  couched  in  the 
poetic  diction  of  an  age  when  everything  was 
personified,  because  all  natural  phenomena  were 
supposed  to  be  due  to  the  direct  workings  of  a 
volition  like  that  of  which  men  were  conscious 
within  themselves.  Thus  we  are  led  to  the 
striking  conclusion  that  mythology  has  had  a 
common  root,  both  with  science  and  with  reli- 
gious philosophy.  The  myth  of  Indra  conquer- 
ing Vritra  was  one  of  the  theorems  of  primitive 
Aryan  science  ;  it  was  a  provisional  explanation 
of  the  thunderstorm,  satisfactory  enough  until 
extended  observation  and  reflection  supplied  a 
better  one.  It  also  contained  the  germs  of  a 
theology  ;  for  the  life-giving  solar  light  fur- 
nished an  important  part  of  the  primeval  con- 
ception of  deity.  And  finally,  it  became  the 
fruitful  parent  of  countless  myths,  whether  em- 
bodied in  the  stately  epics  of  Homer  and  the 
bards  of  the  Nibelungenlied,  or  in  the  humbler 
legends  of  St.  George  and  William  Tell  and  the 
ubiquitous  Boots. 

Such  is  the  theory  which  was  suggested  half 
a  century  ago  by  the  researches  of  Jacob  Grimm,. 
194 


MYTHS  OF  THE  BARBARIC  WORLD 

and  which,  so  far  as  concerns  the  mythology  of 
the  Aryan  race,  is  now  victorious  along  the 
whole  line.  It  remains  for  us  to  test  the  uni- 
versality of  the  general  principles  upon  which  it 
is  founded,  by  a  brief  analysis  of  sundry  legends 
and  superstitions  of  the  barbaric  world.  Since 
the  fetichistic  habit  of  explaining  the  outward 
phenomena  of  nature  after  the  analogy  of  the 
inward  phenomena  of  conscious  intelligence  is 
not  a  habit  peculiar  to  our  Aryan  ancestors,  but 
is,  as  psychology  shows,  the  inevitable  result  of 
the  conditions  under  which  uncivilized  think- 
ing proceeds,  we  may  expect  to  find  the  bar- 
baric mind  personifying  the  powers  of  nature 
and  making  myths  about  their  operations  the 
whole  world  over.  And  we  need  not  be  sur- 
prised if  we  find  in  the  resulting  mythologic 
structures  a  strong  resemblance  to  the  familiar 
creations  of  the  Aryan  intelligence.  In  point 
of  fact,  we  shall  often  be  called  upon  to  note 
such  resemblance  ;  and  it  accordingly  behooves 
us  at  the  outset  to  inquire  how  far  a  similarity 
between  mythical  tales  shall  be  taken  as  evi- 
dence of  a  common  traditional  origin,  and  how 
far  it  may  be  interpreted  as  due  merely  to  the 
similar  workings  of  the  untrained  intelligence 
in  all  ages  and  countries. 

Analogies  drawn  from  the  comparison  of  lan- 
guages will  here  be  of  service  to  us,  if  used  dis- 
creetly ;  otherwise  they  are  likely  to  bewilder 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

far  more  than  to  enlighten  us.  A  theorem  which 
Max  Miiller  has  laid  down  for  our  guidance  in 
this  kind  of  investigation  furnishes  us  with  an 
excellent  example  of  the  tricks  which  a  super- 
ficial analogy  may  play  even  with  the  trained 
scholar,  when  temporarily  off  his  guard.  Actu- 
ated by  a  praiseworthy  desire  to  raise  the  study 
of  myths  to  something  like  the  high  level  of 
scientific  accuracy  already  attained  by  the  study 
of  words,  Max  Miiller  endeavours  to  introduce 
one  of  the  most  useful  canons  of  philology  into 
a  department  of  inquiry  where  its  introduction 
could  only  work  the  most  hopeless  confusion. 
One  of  the  earliest  lessons  to  be  learned  by  the 
scientific  student  of  linguistics  is  the  uselessness 
of  comparing  together  directly  the  words  con- 
tained in  derivative  languages.  For  example, 
you  might  set  the  English  twelve  side  by  side 
with  the  Latin  duodfdm,  and  then  stare  at  the 
two  words  to  all  eternity  without  any  hope  of 
reaching  a  conclusion,  good  or  bad,  about  either 
of  them  :  least  of  all  would  you  suspect  that 
they  are  descended  from  the  same  radical. 
But  if  you  take  each  word  by  itself  and  trace  it 
back  to  its  primitive  shape,  explaining  every 
change  of  every  letter  as  you  go,  you  will  at 
last  reach  the  old  Aryan  dvadakan,  which  is  the 
parent  of  both  these  strangely  metamorphosed 
words.1  Nor  will  it  do,  on  the  other  hand,  to 
1  For  the  analysis  of  twelve,  see  my  essay  on  «  «  The  Gen- 
196 


MYTHS  OF  THE  BARBARIC  WORLD 

trust  to  verbal  similarity  without  a  historical  in- 
quiry into  the  origin  of  such  similarity.  Even 
in  the  same  language  two  words  of  quite  differ- 
ent origin  may  get  their  corners  rubbed  off  till 
they  look  as  like  one  another  as  two  pebbles. 
The  French  words  souris,  a  "mouse,"  and 
souris,  a  "  smile,"  are  spelled  exactly  alike ;  but 
the  one  comes  from  Latin  sorex  and  the  other 
from  Latin  subridere. 

Now  Max  Miiller  tells  us  that  this  principle, 
which  is  indispensable  in  the  study  of  words,  is 
equally  indispensable  in  the  study  of  myths.1 
That  is,  you  must  not  rashly  pronounce  the 
Norse  story  of  the  Heartless  Giant  identical 
with  the  Hindu  story  of  Punchkin,  although 
the  two  correspond  in  every  essential  incident. 
In  both  legends  a  magician  turns  several  mem- 
bers of  the  same  family  into  stone  ;  the  young- 
est member  of  the  family  comes  to  the  rescue, 
and  on  the  way  saves  the  lives  of  sundry  grate- 
ful beasts  ;  arrived  at  the  magician's  castle,  he 
finds  a  captive  princess  ready  to  accept  his  love 
and  to  play  the  part  of  Delilah  to  the  en- 
chanter. .  In  both  stories  the  enchanter's  life 
depends  on  the  integrity  of  something  which  is 
elaborately  hidden  in  a  far-distant  island,  but 
which  the  fortunate  youth,  instructed  by  the 

esis  of  Language,"  North  American  Review,  October,  1869, 
p.  320. 

1   Chips  from  a  German  Workshop,  vol.  ii.  p.  246. 
197 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

artful  princess  and  assisted  by  his  menagerie  of 
grateful  beasts,  succeeds  in  obtaining.  In  both 
stories  the  youth  uses  his  advantage  to  free  all 
his  friends  from  their  enchantment,  and  then 
proceeds  to  destroy  the  villain  who  wrought  all 
this  wickedness.  Yet,  in  spite  of  this  agreement, 
Max  Miiller,  if  I  understand  him  aright,  would 
not  have  us  infer  the  identity  of  the  two  stories 
until  we  have  taken  each  one  separately  and 
ascertained  its  primitive  mythical  significance. 
Otherwise,  for  aught  we  can  tell,  the  resem- 
blance may  be  purely  accidental,  like  that  of  the 
French  words  for  "  mouse  "  and  "  smile." 

A  little  reflection,  however,  will  relieve  us 
from  this  perplexity,  and  assure  us  that  the 
alleged  analogy  between  the  comparison  of  words 
and  the  comparison  of  stories  is  utterly  superfi- 
cial. The  transformations  of  words  —  which  are 
often  astounding  enough  —  depend  upon  a  few 
well-established  physiological  principles  of  ut- 
terance ;  and  since  philology  has  learned  to  rely 
upon  these  principles,  it  has  become  nearly  as 
sure  in  its  methods  and  results  as  one  of  the  so- 
called  "  exact  sciences."  Folly  enough  is  doubt- 
less committed  within  its  precincts  by  writers 
who  venture  there  without  the  laborious  prepa- 
ration which  this  science,  more  than  almost  any 
other,  demands.  But  the  proceedings  of  the 
trained  philologist  are  no  more  arbitrary  than 
those  of  the  trained  astronomer.  And  though 


MYTHS  OF  THE  BARBARIC  WORLD 

the  former  may  seem  to  be  straining  at  a  gnat 
and  swallowing  a  camel  when  he  coolly  tells  you 
that  violin  and  fiddle  are  the  same  word,  while 
English  care  and  Latin  cura  have  nothing  to  do 
with  each  other,  he  is  nevertheless  no  more  in- 
dulging in  guess-work  than  the  astronomer  who 
confesses  his  ignorance  as  to  the  habitability  of 
Venus  while  asserting  his  knowledge  of  the  ex- 
istence of  hydrogen  in  the  atmosphere  of  Sirius. 
To  cite  one  example  out  of  a  hundred,  every 
philologist  knows  that  s  may  become  r,  and  that 
the  broad  0-sound  may  dwindle  into  the  closer 
0-sound  ;  but  when  you  adduce  some  plausible 
etymology  based  on  the  assumption  that  r  has 
changed  into  s,  or  o  into  a,  apart  from  the  de- 
monstrable influence  of  some  adjacent  letter, 
the  philologist  will  shake  his  head. 

Now  in  the  study  of  stories  there  are  no  such 
simple  rules  all  cut  and  dried  for  us  to  go  by. 
There  is  no  uniform  psychological  principle 
which  determines  that  the  three-headed  snake 
in  one  story  shall  become  a  three-headed  man 
in  the  next.  There  is  no  Grimm's  law  in  my- 
thology which  decides  that  a  Hindu  magician 
shall  always  correspond  to  a  Norwegian  Troll 
or  a  Keltic  Druid.  The  laws  of  association  of 
ideas  are  not  so  simple  in  application  as  the  laws 
of  utterance.  In  short,  the  study  of  myths, 
though  it  can  be  made  sufficiently  scientific  in 
its  methods  and  results,  does  not  constitute  a 
199 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

science  by  itself,  like  philology.  It  stands  on 
a  footing  similar  to  that  occupied  by  physical 
geography,  or  what  the  Germans  call  "  earth- 
knowledge."  No  one  denies  that  all  the  changes 
going  on  over  the  earth's  surface  conform  to 
physical  laws  ;  but  then  no  one  pretends  that 
there  is  any  single  proximate  principle  which 
governs  all  the  phenomena  of  rainfall,  of  soil- 
crumbling,  of  magnetic  variation,  and  of  the 
distribution  of  plants  and  animals.  All  these 
things  are  explained  by  principles  obtained  from 
the  various  sciences  of  physics,  chemistry,  geo- 
logy, and  physiology.  And  in  just  the  same  way 
the  development  and  distribution  of  stories  is 
explained  by  the  help  of  divers  resources  con- 
tributed by  philology,  psychology,  and  history. 
There  is  therefore  no  real  analogy  between  the 
cases  cited  by  Max  Miiller.  Two  unrelated 
words  may  be  ground  into  exactly  the  same 
shape,  just  as  a  pebble  from  the  North  Sea 
may  be  undistinguishable  from  another  pebble 
on  the  beach  of  the  Adriatic ;  but  two  stories 
like  those  of  Punchkin  and  the  Heartless  Giant 
are  no  more  likely  to  arise  independently  of 
each  other  than  two  coral  reefs  on  opposite 
sides  of  the  globe  are  likely  to  develop  into 
exactly  similar  islands. 

Shall  we  then  say  boldly  that  close  similar- 
ity between  legends  is  proof  of  kinship,  and  go 
our  way  without  further  misgivings  ?  Unfortu- 
200 


MYTHS  OF  THE  BARBARIC  WORLD 

nately  we  cannot  dispose  of  the  matter  in  quite 
so  summary  a  fashion ;  for  it  remains  to  decide 
what  kind  and  degree  of  similarity  shall  be  con- 
sidered satisfactory  evidence  of  kinship.  And 
it  is  just  here  that  doctors  may  disagree.  Here 
is  the  point  at  which  our  "  science  "  betrays  its 
weakness  as  compared  with  the  sister  study  of 
philology.  Before  we  can  decide  with  confi- 
dence in  any  case,  a  great  mass  of  evidence 
must  be  brought  into  court.  So  long  as  we 
remained  on  Aryan  ground,  all  went  smoothly 
enough,  because  all  the  external  evidence  was 
in  our  favour.  We  knew  at  the  outset  that  the 
Aryans  inherit  a  common  language  and  a  com- 
mon civilization,  and  therefore  we  found  no 
difficulty  in  accepting  the  conclusion  that  they 
have  inherited,  among  other  things,  a  common 
stock  of  legends.  In  the  barbaric  world  it  is 
quite  otherwise.  Philology  does  not  pronounce 
in  favour  of  a  common  origin  for  all  barbaric 
culture,  such  as  it  is.  The  notion  of  a  single 
primitive  language,  standing  in  the  same  rela- 
tion to  all  existing  dialects  as  the  relation  of 
old  Aryan  to  Latin  and  English,  or  that  of  old 
Semitic  to  Hebrew  and  Arabic,  was  a  notion 
suited  only  to  the  infancy  of  linguistic  science. 
As  the  case  now  stands,  it  is  certain  that  all  the 
languages  actually  existing  cannot  be  referred 
to  a  common  ancestor,  and  it  is  altogether  prob- 
able that  there  never  was  any  such  common 
201 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

ancestor.  I  am  not  now  referring  to  the  ques- 
tion of  the  unity  of  the  human  race.  That 
question  lies  entirely  outside  the  sphere  of  phi- 
lology. The  science  of  language  has  nothing 
to  do  with  skulls  or  complexions,  and  no  com- 
parison of  words  can  tell  us  whether  the  black 
men  are  brethren  of  the  white  men,  or  whether 
yellow  and  red  men  have  a  common  pedigree : 
these  questions  belong  to  comparative  physio- 
logy. But  the  science  of  language  can  and  does 
tell  us  that  a  certain  amount  of  civilization  is 
requisite  for  the  production  of  a  language  suf- 
ficiently durable  and  widespread  to  give  birth 
to  numerous  mutually  resembling  offspring. 
Barbaric  languages  are  neither  widespread  nor 
durable.  Among  savages  each  little  group  of 
families  has  its  own  dialect,  and  coins  its  own  ex- 
pressions at  pleasure  ;  and  in  the  course  of  two 
or  three  generations  a  dialect  gets  so  strangely 
altered  as  virtually  to  lose  its  identity.  Even 
numerals  and  personal  pronouns,  which  the 
Aryan  has  preserved  for  fifty  centuries,  get  lost 
every  few  years  in  Polynesia.  Since  the  time 
of  Captain  Cook  the  Tahitian  language  has 
thrown  away  five  out  of  its  ten  simple  numer- 
als, and  replaced  them  by  brand-new  ones  ;  and 
on  the  Amazon  you  may  acquire  a  fluent  com- 
mand of  some  Indian  dialect,  and  then,  coming 
back  after  twenty  years,  find  yourself  worse  off 
than  Rip  Van  Winkle,  and  your  learning  all 

202 


MYTHS  OF  THE  BARBARIC  WORLD 

antiquated  and  useless.  How  absurd,  therefore, 
to  suppose  that  primeval  savages  originated  a 
language  which  has  held  its  own  like  the  old 
Aryan,  and  become  the  prolific  mother  of  the 
three  or  four  thousand  dialects  now  in  exist- 
ence !  Before  a  durable  language  can  arise, 
there  must  be  an  aggregation  of  numerous 
tribes  into  a  people,  so  that  there  may  be  need 
of  communication  on  a  large  scale,  and  so  that 
tradition  may  be  strengthened.  Wherever  man- 
kind have  associated  in  nations,  permanent  lan- 
guages have  arisen,  and  their  derivative  dialects 
bear  the  conspicuous  marks  of  kinship ;  but 
where  mankind  have  remained  in  their  primi- 
tive savage  isolation,  their  languages  have  re- 
mained sporadic  and  transitory,  incapable  of 
organic  development,  and  showing  no  traces  of 
a  kinship  which  never  existed. 

The  bearing  of  these  considerations  upon  the 
origin  and  diffusion  of  barbaric  myths  is  obvi- 
ous. The  development  of  a  common  stock  of 
legends  is,  of  course,  impossible,  save  where 
there  is  a  common  language  ;  and  thus  philo- 
logy pronounces  against  the  kinship  of  barbaric 
myths  with  each  other  and  with  similar  myths 
of  the  Aryan  and  Semitic  worlds.  Similar  stories 
told  in  Greece  and  Norway  are  likely  to  have  a 
common  pedigree,  because  the  persons  who  have 
preserved  them  in  recollection  speak  a  common 
language  and  have  inherited  the  same  civiliza- 
203 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

tion.  But  similar  stories  told  in  Labrador  and 
South  Africa  are  not  likely  to  be  genealogically 
related,  because  it  is  altogether  probable  that  the 
Esquimaux  and  the  Zulu  had  acquired  their 
present  race  characteristics  before  either  of  them 
possessed  a  language  or  a  culture  sufficient  for 
the  production  of  myths.  According  to  the  na- 
ture and  extent  of  the  similarity,  it  must  be 
decided  whether  such  stories  have  been  carried 
about  from  one  part  of  the  world  to  another, 
or  have  been  independently  originated  in  many 
different  places. 

Here  the  methods  of  philology  suggest  a  rule 
which  will  often  be  found  useful.  In  compar- 
ing the  vocabularies  of  different  languages,  those 
words  which  directly  imitate  natural  sounds  — 
such  as  whiz,  crash,  crackle  —  are  not  admitted 
as  evidence  of  kinship  between  the  languages  in 
which  they  occur.  Resemblances  between  such 
words  are  obviously  no  proof  of  a  common 
ancestry ;  and  they  are  often  met  with  in  lan- 
guages which  have  demonstrably  had  no  connec- 
tion with  each  other.  So  in  mythology,  where 
we  find  two  stories  of  which  the  primitive  char- 
acter is  perfectly  transparent,  we  need  have  no 
difficulty  in  supposing  them  to  have  originated 
independently.  The  myth  of  Jack  and  his 
Bean-Stalk  is  found  all  over  the  world  ;  but  the 
idea  of  a  country  above  the  sky,  to  which  per- 


204 


MYTHS  OF  THE  BARBARIC  WORLD 

sons  might  gain  access  by  climbing,  is  one  which 
could  hardly  fail  to  occur  to  every  barbarian. 
Among  the  American  tribes,  as  well  as  among 
the  Aryans,  the  rainbow  and  the  Milky  Way 
have  contributed  the  idea  of  a  Bridge  of  the 
Dead,  over  which  souls  must  pass  on  the  way 
to  the  other  world.  In  South  Africa,  as  well 
as  in  Germany,  the  habits  of  the  fox  and  of 
his  brother  the  jackal  have  given  rise  to  fables 
in  which  brute  force  is  overcome  by  cunning. 
In  many  parts  of  the  world  we  find  curiously 
similar  stories  devised  to  account  for  the 
stumpy  tails  of  the  bear  and  hyaena,  the  hair- 
less tail  of  the  rat,  and  the  blindness  of  the 
mole.  And  in  all  countries  may  be  found  the 
beliefs  that  men  may  be  changed  into  beasts,  or 
plants,  or  stones  ;  that  the  sun  is  in  some  way 
tethered  or  constrained  to  follow  a  certain 
course ;  that  the  storm-cloud  is  a  ravenous 
dragon  ;  and  that  there  are  talismans  which  will 
reveal  hidden  treasures.  All  these  conceptions 
are  so  obvious  to  the  uncivilized  intelligence 
that  stories  founded  upon  them  need  not  be 
supposed  to  have  a  common  origin,  unless  there 
turns  out  to  be  a  striking  similarity  among  their 
minor  details.  On  the  other  hand,  the  numer- 
ous myths  of  an  all-destroying  deluge  have 
doubtless  arisen  partly  from  reminiscences  of 
actually  occurring  local  inundations,  and  partly 


205 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

from  the  fact  that  the  Scriptural  account  of  a 
deluge  has  been  carried  all  over  the  world  by 
Catholic  and  Protestant  missionaries.1 

By  way  of  illustrating  these  principles,  let  us 
now  cite  a  few  of  the  American  myths  so  care- 
fully collected  by  Dr.  Brinton  in  his  admirable 
treatise.  We  shall  not  find  in  the  mythology 
of  the  New  World  the  wealth  of  wit  and  im- 
agination which  has  so  long  delighted  us  in  the 
stories  of  Herakles,  Perseus,  Hermes,  Sigurd, 
and  Indra.  The  mythic  lore  of  the  American 
Indians  is  comparatively  scanty  and  prosaic,  as 
befits  the  product  of  a  lower  grade  of  culture 
and  a  more  meagre  intellect.  Not  only  are 
the  personages  less  characteristically  portrayed, 
but  there  is  a  continual  tendency  to  extrava- 
gance, the  sure  index  of  an  inferior  imagination. 
Nevertheless,  after  making  due  allowances  for 
differences  in  the  artistic  method  of  treatment, 
there  is  between  the  mythologies  of  the  Old  and 
the  New  Worlds  a  fundamental  resemblance. 
We  come  upon  solar  myths  and  myths  of  the 
storm  curiously  blended  with  culture  myths,  as 
in  the  cases  of  Hermes,  Prometheus,  and  Kad- 
mos.  The  American  parallels  to  these  are  to 
be  found  in  the  stories  of  Michabo,  Viracocha, 
loskeha,  and  Quetzalcoatl.  "  As  elsewhere  the 
world  over,  so  in  America,  many  tribes  had 

1  For  various  legends  of  a  deluge,  see  Baring-Gould,  Le- 
gends of  the  Patriarchs  and  Prophets  t  pp.  85-106. 
206 


MYTHS  OF  THE  BARBARIC  WORLD 

to  tell  of  ...  an  august  character,  who  taught 
them  what  they  knew,  —  the  tillage  of  the  soil, 
the  properties  of  plants,  the  art  of  picture-writ- 
ing, the  secrets  of  magic  ;  who  founded  their 
institutions  and  established  their  religions  ;  who 
governed  them  long  with  glory  abroad  and  peace 
at  home  ;  and  finally  did  not  die,  but,  like  Fred- 
eric Barbarossa,  Charlemagne,  King  Arthur,  and 
all  great  heroes,  vanished  mysteriously,  and  still 
lives  somewhere,  ready  at  the  right  moment  to 
return  to  his  beloved  people  and  lead  them  to 
victory  and  happiness."  1  Every  one  is  familiar 
with  the  numerous  legends  of  white-skinned, 
full-bearded  heroes,  like  the  mild  Quetzalcoatl, 
who  in  times  long  previous  to  Columbus  came 
from  the  far  East  to  impart  the  rudiments  of 
civilization  and  religion  to  the  red  men.  By 
those  who  first  heard  these  stories  they  were 
supposed,  with  naive  Euhemerism,  to  refer  to 
pre-Columbian  visits  of  Europeans  to  this  con- 
tinent, like  that  of  the  Northmen  in  the  tenth 
century.  But  a  scientific  study  of  the  subject 
has  dissipated  such  notions.  These  legends  are 
far  too  numerous,  they  are  too  similar  to  each 
other,  they  are  too  manifestly  symbolical,  to 
admit  of  any  such  interpretation.  By  comparing 
them  carefully  with  each  other,  and  with  corre- 
lative myths  of  the  Old  World,  their  true  char- 
acter soon  becomes  apparent. 

1  Brinton,  Myths  of  the  New  World,  p.  1 60. 
207 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

One  of  the  most  widely  famous  of  these  cul- 
ture heroes  was  Manabozho  or  Michabo,  the 
Great  Hare.  With  entire  unanimity,  says  Dr. 
Brinton,  the  various  branches  of  the  Algonquin 
race,  "  the  Powhatans  of  Virginia,  the  Lenni 
Lenape  of  the  Delaware,  the  warlike  hordes  of 
New  England,  the  Ottawas  of  the  far  North, 
and  the  Western  tribes,  perhaps  without  excep- 
tion, spoke  of '  this  chimerical  beast,'  as  one  of 
the  old  missionaries  calls  it,  as  their  common 
ancestor.  The  totem,  or  clan,  which  bore  his 
name  was  looked  up  to  with  peculiar  respect." 
Not  only  was  Michabo  the  ruler  and  guardian 
of  these  numerous  tribes,  —  he  was  the  founder 
of  their  religious  rites,  the  inventor  of  picture- 
writing,  the  ruler  of  the  weather,  the  creator  and 
preserver  of  earth  and  heaven.  "  From  a  grain 
of  sand  brought  from  the  bottom  of  the  prime- 
val ocean  he  fashioned  the  habitable  land,  and 
set  it  floating  on  the  waters  till  it  grew  to  such  a 
size  that  a  strong  young  wolf,  running  constantly, 
died  of  old  age  ere  he  reached  its  limits."  He 
was  also,  like  Nimrod,  a  mighty  hunter.  "  One 
of  his  footsteps  measured  eight  leagues,  the 
Great  Lakes  were  the  beaver  dams  he  built, 
and  when  the  cataracts  impeded  his  progress  he 
tore  them  away  with  his  hands."  "  Sometimes 
he  was  said  to  dwell  in  the  skies  with  his  bro- 
ther, the  Snow,  or,  like  many  great  spirits,  to 

208 


MYTHS  OF  THE  BARBARIC  WORLD 

have  built  his  wigwam  in  the  far  North  on  some 
floe  of  ice  in  the  Arctic  Ocean.  .  .  .  But  in 
the  oldest  accounts  of  the  missionaries  he  was 
alleged  to  reside  toward  the  East ;  and  in  the 
holy  formulae  of  the  meda  craft,  when  the  winds 
are  invoked  to  the  medicine  lodge,  the  East  is 
summoned  in  his  name,  the  door  opens  in  that 
direction,  and  there,  at  the  edge  of  the  earth 
where  the  sun  rises,  on  the  shore  of  the  infinite 
ocean  that  surrounds  the  land,  he  has  his  house, 
and  sends  the  luminaries  forth  on  their  daily 
journeys."  *  From  such  accounts  as  this  we  see 
that  Michabo  was  no  more  a  wise  instructor 
and  legislator  than  Minos  or  Kadmos.  Like 
these  heroes,  he  is  a  personification  of  the  solar 
life-giving  power,  which  daily  comes  forth  from 
its  home  in  the  east,  making  the  earth  to  re- 
joice. The  etymology  of  his  name  confirms  the 
otherwise  clear  indications  of  the  legend  itself. 
It  is  compounded  of  michi,  "  great,"  and  wabos, 
which  means  alike  "  hare  "  and  "white."  "  Dia- 
lectic forms  in  Algonquin  for  white  are  wabi , 
wape,  wampiy  etc. ;  for  morning,  wapan,  wa- 
panch,  opah  ;  for  east,  wapa,  wanbun,  etc. ;  for 
day,  wompan,  oppan  ;  for  light,  oppung."  So  that 
Michabo  is  the  Great  White  One,  the  God  of 
the  Dawn  and  the  East.  And  the  etymological 
confusion,  by  virtue  of  which  he  acquired  his 
1  Brinton,  op.  fit.  p.  163. 


209 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

sobriquet  of  the  Great  Hare,  affords  a  curious 
parallel  to  what  has  often  happened  in  Aryan 
and  Semitic  mythology,  as  we  saw  when  dis- 
cussing the  subject  of  werewolves. 

Keeping  in  mind  this  solar  character  of  Mi- 
chabo,  let  us  note  how  full  of  meaning  are  the 
myths  concerning  him.  In  the  first  cycle  of 
these  legends,  "  he  is  grandson  of  the  Moon, 
his  father  is  the  West  Wind,  and  his  mother,  a 
maiden,  dies  in  giving  him  birth  at  the  moment 
of  conception.  For  the  Moon  is  the  goddess 
of  night ;  the  Dawn  is  her  daughter,  who  brings 
forth  the  Morning,  and  perishes  herself  in  the 
act ;  and  the  West,  the  spirit  of  darkness,  as 
the  East  is  of  light,  precedes,  and  as  it  were 
begets  the  latter,  as  the  evening  does  the  morn- 
ing. Straightway,  however,  continues  the  legend, 
the  son  sought  the  unnatural  father  to  revenge 
the  death  of  his  mother,  and  then  commenced 
a  long  and  desperate  struggle.  It  began  on 
the  mountains.  The  West  was  forced  to  give 
ground.  Manabozho  drove  him  across  rivers 
and  over  mountains  and  lakes,  and  at  last  he 
came  to  the  brink  of  this  world.  '  Hold,'  cried 
he,  f  my  son,  you  know  my  power,  and  that  it 
is  impossible  to  kill  me.'  What  is  this  but  the 
diurnal  combat  of  light  and  darkness,  carried 
on  from  what  time  f  the  jocund  morn  stands 
tiptoe  on  the  misty  mountain-tops,'  across  the 
wide  world  to  the  sunset,  the  struggle  that 
210 


MYTHS  OF  THE  BARBARIC  WORLD 

knows  no  end,  for  both  the  opponents  are  im- 
mortal ?  " 1 

Even  the  Veda  nowhere  affords  a  more  trans- 
parent narrative  than  this.  The  Iroquois  tradi- 
tion is  very  similar.  In  it  appear  twin  brothers,2 
born  of  a  virgin  mother,  daughter  of  the  Moon, 
who  died  in  giving  them  life.  Their  names, 
loskeha  and  Tawiskara,  signify  in  the  Oneida 
dialect  the  White  One  and  the  Dark  One. 
Under  the  influence  of  Christian  ideas  the  con- 
test between  the  brothers  has  been  made  to  as- 
sume a  moral  character,  like  the  strife  between 
Ormuzd  and  Ahriman.  But  no  such  intention 
appears  in  the  original  myth,  and  Dr.  Brinton 
has  shown  that  none  of  the  American  tribes  had 
any  conception  of  a  Devil.  When  the  quarrel 
came  to  blows,  the  dark  brother  was  signally 
discomfited  ;  and  the  victorious  loskeha,  return- 
ing to  his  grandmother,  "  established  his  lodge 
in  the  far  East,  on  the  borders  of  the  Great 
Ocean,  whence  the  sun  comes.  In  time  he  be- 
came the  father  of  mankind,  and  special  guar- 
dian of  the  Iroquois."  He  caused  the  earth  to 
bring  forth,  he  stocked  the  woods  with  game, 
and  taught  his  children  the  use  of  fire.  "  He  it 
was  who  watched  and  watered  their  crops  ; f  and, 

1  Brinton,  op,  cit.  p.  167. 

2  Corresponding,   in  various   degrees,  to   the  Asvins,  the 
Dioskouroi,  and  the   brothers   True   and   Untrue   of  Norse 
mythology. 

211 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

indeed,  without  his  aid,'  says  the  old  mission- 
ary, quite  out  of  patience  with  their  puerilities, 
f  they  think  they  could  not  boil  a  pot.'  "  There 
was  more  in  it  than  poor  Brebeuf  thought,  as 
we  are  forcibly  reminded  by  recent  discoveries 
in  physical  science.  Even  civilized  men  would 
find  it  difficult  to  boil  a  pot  without  the  aid 
of  solar  energy.  Call  him  what  we  will,  — 
loskeha,  Michabo,  or  Phoibos,  —  the  benefi- 
cent Sun  is  the  master  and  sustainer  of  us  all ; 
and  if  we  were  to  relapse  into  heathenism,  like 
Erckmann-Chatrian's  innkeeper,  we  could  not 
do  better  than  to  select  him  as  our  chief  object 
of  worship. 

The  same  principles  by  which  these  simple 
cases  are  explained  furnish  also  the  key  to  the 
more  complicated  mythology  of  Mexico  and 
Peru.  Like  the  deities  just  discussed,  Vira- 
cocha,  the  supreme  god  of  the  Quichuas,  rises 
from  the  bosom  of  Lake  Titicaca  and  journeys 
westward,  slaying  with  his  lightnings  the  crea- 
tures who  oppose  him,  until  he  finally  disap- 
pears in  the  Western  Ocean.  Like  Aphrodite, 
he  bears  in  his  name  the  evidence  of  his  origin, 
Viracocha  signifying  "  foam  of  the  sea  ;  "  and 
hence  the  "  White  One  "  (I ' aube]^  the  god  of 
light  rising  white  on  the  horizon,  like  the  foam 
on  the  surface  of  the  waves.  The  Aymaras 
spoke  of  their  original  ancestors  as  white ;  and 
to  this  day,  as  Dr.  Brinton  informs  us,  the  Peru- 
212 


MYTHS  OF  THE  BARBARIC  WORLD 

vians  call  a  white  man  Viracocha.  The  myth 
of  Quetzalcoatl  is  of  precisely  the  same  charac- 
ter. All  these  solar  heroes  present  in  most  of 
their  qualities  and  achievements  a  striking  like- 
ness to  those  of  the  Old  World.  They  com- 
bine the  attributes  of  Apollo,  Herakles,  and 
Hermes.  Like  Herakles,  they  journey  from 
east  to  west,  smiting  the  powers  of  darkness, 
storm,  and  winter  with  the  thunderbolts  of 
Zeus  or  the  unerring  arrows  of  Phoibos,  and 
sinking  in  a  blaze  of  glory  on  the  western  verge 
of  the  world,  where  the  waves  meet  the  fir- 
mament. Or  like  Hermes,  in  a  second  cycle 
of  legends,  they  rise  with  the  soft  breezes  of  a 
summer  morning,  driving  before  them  the  bright 
celestial  cattle  whose  udders  are  heavy  with  re- 
freshing rain,  fanning  the  flames  which  devour 
the  forests,  blustering  at  the  doors  of  wigwams, 
and  escaping  with  weird  laughter  through  vents 
and  crevices.  The  white  skins  and  flowing  beards 
of  these  American  heroes  may  be  aptly  com- 
pared to  the  fair  faces  and  long  golden  locks  of 
their  Hellenic  compeers.  Yellow  hair  was  in  all 
probability  as  rare  in  Greece  as  a  full  beard  in 
Peru  or  Mexico ;  but  in  each  case  the  descrip- 
tion suits  the  solar  character  of  the  hero.  One 
important  class  of  incidents,  however,  is  appar- 
ently quite  absent  from  the  American  legends. 
We  frequently  see  the  Dawn  described  as  a  vir- 
gin mother  who  dies  in  giving  birth  to  the  Day  ; 
213 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

but  nowhere  do  we  remember  seeing  her  pic- 
tured as  a  lovely  or  valiant  or  crafty  maiden, 
ardently  wooed,  but  speedily  forsaken  by  her 
solar  lover.  Perhaps  in  no  respect  is  the  supe- 
rior richness  and  beauty  of  the  Aryan  myths 
more  manifest  than  in  this.  Brynhild,  Urvasi, 
Medeia,  Ariadne,  Oinone,  and  countless  other 
kindred  heroines,  with  their  brilliant  legends, 
could  not  be  spared  from  the  mythology  of  our 
ancestors  without  leaving  it  meagre  indeed. 
These  were  the  materials  which  Kalidasa,  the 
Attic  dramatists,  and  the  bards  of  the  Nibe- 
lungen  found  ready,  awaiting  their  artistic  treat- 
ment. But  the  mythology  of  the  New  World, 
with  all  its  pretty  and  agreeable  naivet'e,  affords 
hardly  enough,  either  of  variety  in  situation  or 
of  complexity  in  motive,  for  a  grand  epic  or  a 
genuine  tragedy. 

But  little  reflection  is  needed  to  assure  us 
that  the  imagination  of  the  barbarian,  who  either 
carries  away  his  wife  by  brute  force  or  buys 
her  from  her  relatives  as  he  would  buy  a  cow, 
could  never  have  originated  legends  in  which 
maidens  are  lovingly  solicited,  or  in  which  their 
favour  is  won  by  the  performance  of  deeds  of 
valour.  These  stories  owe  their  existence  to  the 
romantic  turn  of  mind  which  has  always  char- 
acterized the  Aryan,  whose  civilization,  even  in 
the  times  before  the  dispersion  of  his  race,  was 
sufficiently  advanced  to  allow  of  his  entertain- 
214 


MYTHS  OF  THE  BARBARIC  WORLD 

ing  such  comparatively  exalted  conceptions  of 
the  relations  between  men  and  women.  The 
absence  of  these  myths  from  barbaric  folk-lore 
is,  therefore,  just  what  might  be  expected ;  but 
it  is  a  fact  which  militates  against  any  possible 
hypothesis  of  the  common  origin  of  Aryan  and 
barbaric  mythology.  If  there  were  any  genetic 
relationship  between  Sigurd  and  loskeha,  be- 
tween Herakles  and  Michabo,  it  would  be  hard 
to  tell  why  Brynhild  and  lole  should  have  dis- 
appeared entirely  from  one  whole  group  of  le- 
gends, while  retained,  in  some  form  or  other, 
throughout  the  whole  of  the  other  group.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  resemblances  above  noticed 
between  Aryan  and  American  mythology  fall 
very  far  short  of  the  resemblances  between  the 
stories  told  in  different  parts  of  the  Aryan  do- 
main. No  barbaric  legend,  of  genuine  barbaric 
growth,  has  yet  been  cited  which  resembles  any 
Aryan  legend  as  the  story  of  Punchkin  resembles 
the  story  of  the  Heartless  Giant.  The  myths  of 
Michabo  and  Viracocha  are  direct  copies,  so  to 
speak,  of  natural  phenomena,  just  as  imitative 
words  are  direct  copies  of  natural  sounds. 
Neither  the  Redskin  nor  the  Indo-European 
had  any  choice  as  to  the  main  features  of  the 
career  of  his  solar  divinity.  He  must  be  born 
of  the  Night,  —  or  of  the  Dawn,  —  must  travel 
westward,  must  slay  harassing  demons.  Elim- 
inating these  points  of  likeness,  the  resemblance 
215 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

between  the  Aryan  and  barbaric  legends  is  at 
once  at  an  end.  Such  an  identity  in  point  of 
details  as  that  between  the  wooden  horse  which 
enters  I  lion,  and  the  horse  which  bears  Sigurd 
into  the  place  where  Brynhild  is  imprisoned, 
and  the  Druidic  steed  which  leaps  with  Scul- 
loge  over  the  walls  of  Fiach's  enchanted  castle, 
is,  I  believe,  nowhere  to  be  found  after  we  leave 
Indo-European  territory. 

Our  conclusion,  therefore,  must  be,  that  while 
the  legends  of  the  Aryan  and  the  non-Aryan 
worlds  contain  common  mythical  elements,  the 
legends  themselves  are  not  of  common  origin. 
The  fact  that  certain  mythical  ideas  are  pos- 
sessed alike  by  different  races  shows  that  in 
each  case  a  similar  human  intelligence  has  been 
at  work  explaining  similar  phenomena  ;  but  in 
order  to  prove  a  family  relationship  between  the 
culture  of  these  different  races  we  need  some- 
thing more  than  this.  We  need  to  prove  not 
only  a  community  of  mythical  ideas,  but  also  a 
community  between  the  stories  based  upon  these 
ideas.  We  must  show  not  only  that  Michabo 
is  like  Herakles  in  those  striking  features  which 
the  contemplation  of  solar  phenomena  would 
necessarily  suggest  to  the  imagination  of  the 
primitive  myth-maker,  but  also  that  the  two 
characters  are  similarly  conceived,  and  that  the 
two  careers  agree  in  seemingly  arbitrary  points 
of  detail,  as  is  the  case  in  the  stories  of  Punchkin 
216 


MYTHS  OF  THE  BARBARIC  WORLD 

and  the  Heartless  Giant.  The  mere  fact  that 
solar  heroes,  all  over  the  world,  travel  in  a  cer- 
tain path  and  slay  imps  of  darkness  is  of  great 
value  as  throwing  light  upon  primeval  habits 
of  thought,  but  it  is  of  no  value  as  evidence  for 
or  against  an  alleged  community  of  civilization 
between  different  races.  The  same  is  true  of 
the  sacredness  universally  attached  to  certain 
numbers.  Dr.  Brinton's  opinion  that  the  sanc- 
tity of  the  number  four  in  nearly  all  systems  of 
mythology  is  due  to  a  primitive  worship  of  the 
cardinal  points,  becomes  very  probable  when 
we  recollect  that  the  similar  preeminence  of 
seven  is  almost  demonstrably  connected  with 
the  adoration  of  the  sun,  moon,  and  five  visible 
planets,  which  has  left  its  record  in  the  structure 
and  nomenclature  of  the  Aryan  and  Semitic 
week.1 

In  view  of  these  considerations,  the  compari- 
son of  barbaric  myths  with  each  other  and  with 
the  legends  of  the  Aryan  world  becomes  doubly 
interesting,  as  illustrating  the  similarity  in  the 
workings  of  the  untrained  intelligence  the  world 
over.  In  our  first  paper  we  saw  how  the  moon- 

1  See  Humboldt's  Kosmos,  torn.  iii.  pp.  469-476.  A 
fetichistic  regard  for  the  cardinal  points  has  not  always  been 
absent  from  the  minds  of  persons  instructed  in  a  higher  theo- 
logy ;  as  witness  a  well-known  passage  in  Irenasus,  and  also 
the  custom,  well-nigh  universal  in  Europe,  of  building  Chris- 
tian churches  in  a  line  east  and  west. 
2I7 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

spots  have  been  variously  explained  by  Indo- 
Europeans,  as  a  man  with  a  thorn-bush  or  as 
two  children  bearing  a  bucket  of  water  on  a 
pole.  In  Ceylon  it  is  said  that  as  Sakyamuni 
was  one  day  wandering  half  starved  in  the  for- 
est, a  pious  hare  met  him,  and  offered  itself  to 
him  to  be  slain  and  cooked  for  dinner;  where- 
upon the  holy  Buddha  set  it  on  high  in  the 
moon,  that  future  generations  of  men  might  see 
it  and  marvel  at  its  piety.  In  the  Samoan  Is- 
lands these  dark  patches  are  supposed  to  be  por- 
tions of  a  woman's  figure.  A  certain  woman 
was  once  hammering  something  with  a  mallet, 
when  the  moon  arose,  looking  so  much  like  a 
breadfruit  that  the  woman  asked  it  to  come 
down  and  let  her  child  eat  off  a  piece  of  it ; 
but  the  moon,  enraged  at  the  insult,  gobbled 
up  woman,  mallet,  and  child,  and  there,  in  the 
moon's  belly,  you  may  still  behold  them.  Ac- 
cording to  the  Hottentots,  the  Moon  once  sent 
the  Hare  to  inform  men  that  as  she  died  away 
and  rose  again,  so  should  men  die  and  again 
come  to  life.  But  the  stupid  Hare  forgot  the 
purport  of  the  message,  and,  coming  down  to 
the  earth,  proclaimed  it  far  and  wide  that  though 
the  Moon  was  invariably  resuscitated  whenever 
she  died,  mankind,  on  the  other  hand,  should 
die  and  go  to  the  Devil.  When  the  silly  brute 
returned  to  the  lunar  country  and  told  what  he 
had  done,  the  Moon  was  so  angry  that  she  took 
218 


MYTHS  OF  THE  BARBARIC  WORLD 

up  an  axe  and  aimed  a  blow  at  his  head  to  split 
it.  But  the  axe  missed  and  only  cut  his  lip 
open  ;  and  that  was  the  origin  of  the  "  hare- 
lip." Maddened  by  the  pain  and  the  insult, 
the  Hare  flew  at  the  Moon  and  almost  scratched 
her  eyes  out ;  and  to  this  day  she  bears  on  her 
face  the  marks  of  the  Hare's  claws.1 

Again,  every  reader  of  the  classics  knows  how 
Selene  cast  Endymion  into  a  profound  slumber 
because  he  refused  her  love,  and  how  at  sun- 
down she  used  to  come  and  stand  above  him  on 
the  Latmian  hill,  and  watch  him  as  he  lay  asleep 
on  the  marble  steps  of  a  temple  half  hidden 
among  drooping  elm-trees,  over  which  clam- 
bered vines  heavy  with  dark  blue  grapes.  This 
represents  the  rising  moon  looking  down  on 
the  setting  sun  ;  in  Labrador  a  similar  phenom- 
enon has  suggested  a  somewhat  different  story. 
Among  the  Esquimaux  the  Sun  is  a  maiden  and 
the  Moon  is  her  brother,  who  is  overcome  by 
a  wicked  passion  for  her.  Once,  as  this  girl  was 
at  a  dancing-party  in  a  friend's  hut,  some  one 
came  up  and  took  hold  of  her  by  the  shoulders 
and  shook  her,  which  is  (according  to  the  le- 
gend) the  Esquimaux  manner  of  declaring  one's 
love.  She  could  not  tell  who  it  was  in  the  dark, 
and  so  she  dipped  her  hand  in  some  soot  and 

1  Bleek,   Hottentot  Fables  and  Tales,  p.  72.      Compare 
the  Fiji  story  of  Ra  Vula,  the  Moon,  and  Ra  Kalavo,  the 
Rat,  in  Tylor,  Primitive  Cu/ture,  i.  321. 
219 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

smeared  one  of  his  cheeks  with  it.  When  a 
light  was  struck  in  the  hut,  she  saw,  to  her  dis- 
may, that  it  was  her  brother,  and,  without  wait- 
ing to  learn  any  more,  she  took  to  her  heels. 
He  started  in  hot  pursuit,  and  so  they  ran  till 
they  got  to  the  end  of  the  world,  —  the  jump- 
ing-off  place,  —  when  they  both  jumped  into 
the  sky.  There  the  Moon  still  chases  his  sis- 
ter, the  Sun  ;  and  every  now  and  then  he  turns 
his  sooty  cheek  toward  the  earth,  when  he  be- 
comes so  dark  that  you  cannot  see  him.1 

Another  story,  which  I  cite  from  Mr.  Tylor, 
shows  that  Malays,  as  well  as  Indo-Europeans, 
have  conceived  of  the  clouds  as  swan-maidens. 
In  the  island  of  Celebes  it  is  said  that  "seven 
heavenly  nymphs  came  down  from  the  sky  to 
bathe,  and  they  were  seen  by  Kasimbaha,  who 
thought  first  that  they  were  white  doves,  but  in 
the  bath  he  saw  that  they  were  women.  Then 
he  stole  one  of  the  thin  robes  that  gave  the 
nymphs  their  power  of  flying,  and  so  he  caught 
Utahagi,  the  one  whose  robe  he  had  stolen,  and 
took  her  for  his  wife,  and  she  bore  him  a  son. 
Now  she  was  called  Utahagi  from  a  single  white 
hair  she  had,  which  was  endowed  with  magic 
power,  and  this  hair  her  husband  pulled  out. 
As  soon  as  he  had  done  it,  there  arose  a  great 
storm,  and  Utahagi  went  up  to  heaven.  The 
child  cried  for  its  mother,  and  Kasimbaha  was 
1  Tylor,  Early  History  of  Mankind,  p.  327. 
220 


MYTHS  OF  THE  BARBARIC  WORLD 

in  great  grief,  and  cast  about  how  he  should  fol- 
low Utahagi  up  into  the  sky."  Here  we  pass  to 
the  myth  of  Jack  and  the  Bean-Stalk.  "  A  rat 
gnawed  the  thorns  off  the  rattans,  and  Kasim- 
baha  clambered  up  by  them  with  his  son  upon 
his  back,  till  he  came  to  heaven.  There  a  little 
bird  showed  him  the  house  of  Utahagi,  and  after 
various  adventures  he  took  up  his  abode  among 
the  gods."  l 

In  Siberia  we  find  a  legend  of  swan-maidens, 
which  also  reminds  us  of  the  story  of  the  Heart- 
less Giant.  A  certain  Samojed  once  went  out  to 
catch  foxes,  and  found  seven  maidens  swimming 
in  a  lake  surrounded  by  gloomy  pine-trees,  while 
their  feather  dresses  lay  on  the  shore.  He  crept 
up  and  stole  one  of  these  dresses,  and  by  and  by 
the  swan-maiden  came  to  him  shivering  with 
cold  and  promising  to  become  his  wife  if  he 
would  only  give  her  back  her  garment  of  feath- 
ers. The  ungallant  fellow,  however,  did  not 
care  for  a  wife,  but  a  little  revenge  was  not  un- 
suited  to  his  way  of  thinking.  There  were  seven 
robbers  who  used  to  prowl  about  the  neighbour- 
hood, and  who,  When  they  got  home,  finding 
their  hearts  in  the  way,  used  to  hang  them  up 
on  some  pegs  in  the  tent.  One  of  these  rob- 
bers had  killed  the  Samojed's  mother  ;  and  so 
he  promised  to  return  the  swan-maiden's  dress 
after  she  should  have  procured  for  him  these 

1  Tylor,  op.  cit.  p..  346. 
221 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

seven  hearts.  So  she  stole  the  hearts,  and  the 
Samojed  smashed  six  of  them,  and  then  woke 
up  the  seventh  robber,  and  told  him  to  restore 
his  mother  to  life,  on  pain  of  instant  death. 
Then  the  robber  produced  a  purse  containing 
the  old  woman's  soul,  and  going  to  the  grave- 
yard shook  it  over  her  bones,  and  she  revived  at 
once.  Then  the  Samojed  smashed  the  seventh 
heart,  and  the  robber  died;  and  so  the  swan- 
maiden  got  back  her  plumage  and  flew  away 
rejoicing.1 

Swan-maidens  are  also,  according  to  Mr. 
Baring-Gould,  found  among  the  Minussinian 
Tartars.  But  there  they  appear  as  foul  demons, 
like  the  Greek  Harpies,  who  delight  in  drink- 
ing the  blood  of  men  slain  in  battle.  There  are 
forty  of  them,  who  darken  the  whole  firmament 
in  their  flight ;  but  sometimes  they  all  coalesce 
into  one  great  black  storm-fiend,  who  rages  for 
blood,  like  a  werewolf. 

In  South  Africa  we  find  the  werewolf  him- 
self.2 A  certain  Hottentot  was  once  travelling 
with  a  Bushwoman  and  her  child,  when  they 

1  Baring-Gould,  Curious  Myths,  ii.  299-302. 

2  Speaking  of  beliefs  in  the  Malay  Archipelago,  Mr.  Wal- 
lace says  :    "  It  is  universally  believed  in  Lombock  that  some 
men  have  the  power  to  turn  themselves  into  crocodiles,  which 
they  do  for  the  sake  of  devouring  their  enemies,  and  many 
strange   tales   are   told   of  such   transformations."    Wallace, 
Malay  Archipelago,  vol.  i.  p.  251. 

222 


MYTHS  OF  THE  BARBARIC  WORLD 

perceived  at  a  distance  a  troop  of  wild  horses. 
The  man,  being  hungry,  asked  the  woman  to 
turn  herself  into  a  lioness  and  catch  one  of  these 
horses,  that  they  might  eat  of  it;  whereupon 
the  woman  set  down  her  child,  and  taking  off  a 
sort  of  petticoat  made  of  human  skin  became 
instantly  transformed  into  a  lioness,  which  rushed 
across  the  plain,  struck  down  a  wild  horse  and 
lapped  its  blood.  The  man  climbed  a  tree  in 
terror,  and  conjured  his  companion  to  resume 
her  natural  shape.  Then  the  lioness  came  back, 
and  putting  on  the  skirt  made  of  human  skin 
reappeared  as  a  woman,  and  took  up  her  child, 
and  the  two  friends  resumed  their  journey  after 
making  a  meal  of  the  horse's  flesh.1 

The  werewolf  also  appears  in  North  Amer- 
ica, duly  furnished  with  his  wolfskin  sack ;  but 
neither  in  America  nor  in  Africa  is  he  the  gen- 
uine European  werewolf,  inspired  by  a  diabolic 
frenzy,  and  ravening  for  human  flesh.  The  bar- 
baric myths  testify  to  the  belief  that  men  can 
be  changed  into  beasts  or  have  in  some  cases 
descended  from  beast  ancestors,  but  the  applica- 
tion of  this  belief  to  the  explanation  of  abnormal 
cannibal  cravings  seems  to  have  been  confined 
to  Europe.  The  werewolf  of  the  Middle  Ages 
was  not  merely  a  transformed  man,  —  he  was 
an  insane  cannibal,  whose  monstrous  appetite, 
due  to  the  machinations  of  the  Devil,  showed 
1  Bleek,  Hottentot  Fables  and  Tales,  p.  58. 
223 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

its  power  over  his  physical  organism  by  chan- 
ging the  shape  of  it.  The  barbaric  werewolf  is 
the  product  of  a  lower  and  simpler  kind  of 
thinking.  There  is  no  diabolism  about  him; 
for  barbaric  races,  while  believing  in  the  exist- 
ence of  hurtful  and  malicious  fiends,  have  not 
a  sufficiently  vivid  sense  of  moral  abnormity  to 
form  the  conception  of  diabolism.  And  the  can- 
nibal craving,  which  to  the  mediaeval  European 
was  a  phenomenon  so  strange  as  to  demand 
a  mythological  explanation,  would  hot  impress 
the  barbarian  as  either  very  exceptional  or  very 
blameworthy. 

In  the  folk-lore  of  the  Zulus,  one  of  the  most 
quick-witted  and  intelligent  of  African  races,  the 
cannibal  possesses  many  features  in  common 
with  the  Scandinavian  Troll,  who  also  has  a 
liking  for  human  flesh.  As  we  saw  in  the  pre- 
ceding paper,  the  Troll  has  very  likely  derived 
some  of  his  characteristics  from  reminiscences 
of  the  barbarous  races  who  preceded  the  Aryans 
in  Central  and  Northern  Europe.  In  like  man- 
ner the  long-haired  cannibal  of  Zulu  nursery 
literature,  who  is  always  represented  as  belong- 
ing to  a  distinct  race,  has  been  supposed  to 
be  explained  by  the  existence  of  inferior  races 
conquered  and  displaced  by  the  Zulus.  Never- 
theless, as  Dr.  Callaway  observes,  neither  the 
long-haired  mountain  cannibals  of  Western 
Africa,  nor  the  Fulahs,  nor  the  tribes  of  Eghe- 
224 


MYTHS  OF  THE  BARBARIC  WORLD 

dal  described  by  Barth,  "  can  be  considered  as 
answering  to  the  description  of  long-haired  as 
given  in  the  Zulu  legends  of  cannibals  ;  neither 
could  they  possibly  have  formed  their  histor- 
ical basis.  .  .  .  It  is  perfectly  clear  that  the  can- 
nibals of  the  Zulu  legends  are  not  common 
men ;  they  are  magnified  into  giants  and  magi- 
cians ;  they  are  remarkably  swift  and  enduring  ; 
fierce  and  terrible  warriors."  Very  probably 
they  may  have  a  mythical  origin  in  modes  of 
thought  akin  to  those  which  begot  the  Panis 
of  the  Veda  and  the  Northern  Trolls.  The 
parallelism  is  perhaps  the  most  remarkable  one 
which  can  be  found  in  comparing  barbaric  with 
Aryan  folk-lore.  Like  the  Panis  and  Trolls, 
the  cannibals  are  represented  as  the  foes  of  the 
solar  hero  Uthlakanyana,  who  is  almost  as  great 
a  traveller  as  Odysseus,  and  whose  presence  of 
mind  amid  trying  circumstances  is  not  to  be 
surpassed  by  that  of  the  incomparable  Boots. 
Uthlakanyana  is  as  precocious  as  Herakles  or 
Hermes.  He  speaks  before  he  is  born,  and  no 
sooner  has  he  entered  the  world  than  he  be- 
gins to  outwit  other  people  and  get  possession 
of  their  property.  He  works  bitter  ruin  for 
the  cannibals,  who,  with  all  their  strength  and 
fleetness,  are  no  better  endowed  with  quick  wit 
than  the  Trolls,  whom  Boots  invariably  victim- 
izes. On  one  of  his  journeys,  Uthlakanyana 
fell  in  with  a  cannibal.  Their  greetings  were 
225 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS    * 

cordial  enough,  and  they  ate  a  bit  of  leopard 
together,  and  began  to  build  a  house,  and  killed 
a  couple  of  cows,  but  the  cannibal's  cow  was  lean, 
while  Uthlakanyana' s  was  fat.  Then  the  crafty 
traveller,  fearing  that  his  companion  might  in- 
sist upon  having  the  fat  cow,  turned  and  said, 
"c  Let  the  house  be  thatched  now;  then  we  can 
eat  our  meat.  You  see  the  sky,  that  we  shall 
get  wet.'  The  cannibal  said,  c  You  are  right, 
child  of  my  sister  ;  you  are  a  man  indeed  in 
saying,  Let  us  thatch  the  house,  for  we  shall  get 
wet.'  Uthlakanyana  said,  *  Do  you  do  it  then  ; 
I  will  go  inside,  and  push  the  thatching  needle 
for  you,  in  the  house.'  The  cannibal  went  up. 
His  hair  was  very,  very  long.  Uthlakanyana 
went  inside  and  pushed  the  needle  for  him. 
He  thatched  in  the  hair  of  the  cannibal,  tying  it 
very  tightly ;  he  knotted  it  into  the  thatch  con- 
stantly, taking  it  by  separate  locks  and  fasten- 
ing it  firmly,  that  it  might  be  tightly  fastened 
to  the  house."  Then  the  rogue  went  outside 
and  began  to  eat  of  the  cow  which  was  roasted. 
"  The  cannibal  said,  f  What  are  you  about,  child 
of  my  sister  ?  Let  us  just  finish  the  house ;  after- 
wards we  can  do  that ;  we  will  do  it  together.' 
Uthlakanyana  replied,  '  Come  down  then.  I 
cannot  go  into  the  house  any  more.  The 
thatching  is  finished.'  The  cannibal  assented. 
When  he  thought  he  was  going  to  quit  the 
house,  he  was  unable  to  quit  it.  He  cried  out 
226 


MYTHS  OF  THE  BARBARIC  WORLD 

saying,  '  Child  of  my  sister,  how  have  you  man- 
aged your  thatching  ? '  Uthlakanyana  said,  *  See 
to  it  yourself.  I  have  thatched  well,  for  I  shall 
not  have  any  dispute.  Now  I  am  about  to  eat 
in  peace  ;  I  no  longer  dispute  with  anybody, 
for  I  am  now  alone  with  my  cow.'  "  So  the  can- 
nibal cried  and  raved  and  appealed  in  vain  to 
Uthlakanyana's  sense  of  justice,  until  by  and 
by  "  the  sky  came  with  hailstones  and  lightning. 
Uthlakanyana  took  all  the  meat  into  the  house ; 
he  stayed  in  the  house  and  lit  a  fire.  It  hailed 
and  rained.  The  cannibal  cried  on  the  top  of 
the  house ;  he  was  struck  with  the  hailstones, 
and  died  there  on  the  house.  It  cleared.  Uthla- 
kanyana went  out  and  said,  f  Uncle,  just  come 
down,  and  come  to  me.  It  has  become  clear. 
It  no  longer  rains,  and  there  is  no  more  hail, 
neither  is  there  any  more  lightning.  Why  are 
you  silent? '  So  Uthlakanyana  ate  his  cow  alone, 
until  he  had  finished  it.  He  then  went  on  his 
way."  l 

In  another  Zulu  legend,  a  girl  is  stolen  by 
cannibals,  and  shut  up  in  the  rock  Itshe-likan- 
tunjambili,  which,  like  the  rock  of  the  Forty 
Thieves,  opens  and  shuts  at  the  command  of 
those  who  understand  its  secret.    She  gets  pos- 
session of  the  secret  and  escapes,  and  when  the 
monsters  pursue  her  she  throws  on  the  ground 
a  calabash  full  of  sesame,  which  they  stop  to  eat. 
1  Callaway,  Zu/u  Nursery  Tales,  pp.  27-30. 
227 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

At  last,  getting  tired  of  running,  she  climbs  a 
tree,  and  there  she  finds  her  brother,  who, 
warned  by  a  dream,  has  come  out  to  look  for 
her.  They  ascend  the  tree  together  until  they 
come  to  a  beautiful  country  well  stocked  with 
fat  oxen.  They  kill  an  ox,  and  while  its  flesh 
is  roasting  they  amuse  themselves  by  making  a 
stout  thong  of  its  hide.  By  and  by  one  of  the 
cannibals,  smelling  the  cooking  meat,  comes  to 
the  foot  of  the  tree,  and  looking  up  discovers 
the  boy  and  girl  in  the  sky  country !  They 
invite  him  up  there  to  share  in  their  feast,  and 
throw  him  an  end  of  the  thong  by  which  to 
climb  up.  When  the  cannibal  is  dangling  mid- 
way between  earth  and  heaven,  they  let  go  the 
rope,  and  down  he  falls  with  a  terrible  crash.1 

In  this  story  the  enchanted  rock  opened  by 
a  talismanic  formula  brings  us  again  into  con, 
tact  with  Indo-European  folk-lore.  And  that 
the  conception  has  in  both  cases  been  suggested 
by  the  same  natural  phenomenon  is  rendered 
probable  by  another  Zulu  tale,  in  which  the 
cannibal's  cave  is  opened  by  a  swallow  which 
flies  in  the  air.  Here  we  have  the  elements  of 
a  genuine  lightning-myth.  We  see  that  among 
these  African  barbarians,  as  well  as  among  our 
own  forefathers,  the  clouds  have  been  conceived 

1  Callaway,  op.  fit.  pp.  142-152  ;  cf.  a  similar  story  in 
which  the  lion  is  fooled  by  the  jackal.  Bleek,  op.  cit.  p.  7. 
I  omit  the  sequel  of  the  tale. 

228 


MYTHS  OF  THE  BARBARIC  WORLD 

as  birds  carrying  the  lightning  which  can  cleave 
the  rocks.  In  America  we  find  the  same  notion 
prevalent.  The  Dakotahs  explain  the  thunder 
as  "  the  sound  of  the  cloud-bird  flapping  his 
wings,"  and  the  Caribs  describe  the  lightning 
as  a  poisoned  dart  which  the  bird  blows  through 
a  hollow  reed,  after  the  Carib  style  of  shooting.1 
On  the  other  hand,  the  Kamtchatkans  know 
nothing  of  a  cloud-bird,  but  explain  the  light- 
ning as  something  analogous  to  the  flames  of  a 
volcano.  The  Kamtchatkans  say  that  when  the 
mountain  goblins  have  got  their  stoves  well 
heated  up,  they  throw  overboard,  with  true  bar- 
baric shiftlessness,  all  the  brands  not  needed  for 
immediate  use,  which  makes  a  volcanic  erup- 
tion. So  when  it  is  summer  on  earth,  it  is  win- 
ter in  heaven  ;  and  the  gods,  after  heating  up 
their  stoves,  throw  away  their  spare  kindling- 
wood,  which  makes  the  lightning.2 

When  treating  of  Indo-European  solar 
myths,  we  saw  the  unvarying,  unresting  course 
of  the  sun  variously  explained  as  due  to  the 
subjection  of  Herakles  to  Eurystheus,  to  the 
anger  of  Poseidon  at  Odysseus,  or  to  the  curse 
laid  upon  the  Wandering  Jew.  The  barbaric 
mind  has  worked  at  the  same  problem  ;  but  the  ^ 
explanations  which  it  has  given  are  more  child- 
like and  more  grotesque.  A  Polynesian  myth 

1  Brinton,  op.  cit.  p.   104. 

2  Tylor,  op.  cit.  p.  320. 

229 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

tells  how  the  Sun  used  to  race  through  the  sky 
so  fast  that  men  could  not  get  enough  daylight 
to  hunt  game  for  their  subsistence.  By  and  by 
an  inventive  genius,  named  Maui,  conceived  the 
idea  of  catching  the  Sun  in  a  noose  and  mak- 
ing him  go  more  deliberately.  He  plaited  ropes 
and  made  a  strong  net,  and,  arming  himself  with 
the  jawbone  of  his  ancestress,  Muri-ranga- 
whenua,  called  together  all  his  brethren,  and 
they  journeyed  to  the  place  where  the  Sun 
rises,  and  there  spread  the  net.  When  the  Sun 
came  up,  he  stuck  his  head  and  fore  paws  into 
the  net,  and  while  the  brothers  tightened  the 
ropes  so  that  they  cut  him  and  made  him  scream 
for  mercy,  Maui  beat  him  with  the  jawbone 
until  he  became  so  weak  that  ever  since  he  has 
only  been  able  to  crawl  through  the  sky.  Ac- 
cording to  another  Polynesian  myth,  there  was 
once  a  grumbling  Radical,  who  never  could  be 
satisfied  with  the  way  in  which  things  are  man- 
aged on  this  earth.  This  bold  Radical  set  out 
to  build  a  stone  house  which  should  last  foi»- 
ever ;  but  the  days  were  so  short  and  the  stones 
so  heavy  that  he  despaired  of  ever  accomplish- 
ing his  project.  One  night,  as  he  lay  awake 
thinking  the  matter  over,  it  occurred  to  him 
that  if  he  could  catch  the  Sun  in  a  net,  he  could 
have  as  much  daylight  as  was  needful  in  order 
to  finish  his  house.  So  he  borrowed  a  noose 
from  the  god  Itu,  and,  it  being  autumn,  when 
230 


MYTHS  OF  THE  BARBARIC  WORLD 

the  Sun  gets  sleepy  and  stupid,  he  easily  caught 
the  luminary.  The  Sun  cried  till  his  tears  made 
a  great  freshet  which  nearly  drowned  the  island  ; 
but  it  was  of  no  use  ;  there  he  is  tethered  to 
this  day. 

Similar  stories  are  met  with  in  North  Amer- 
ica. A  Dog- Rib  Indian  once  chased  a  squirrel 
up  a  tree  until  he  reached  the  sky.  There  he 
set  a  snare  for  the  squirrel  and  climbed  down 
again.  Next  day  the  Sun  was  caught  in  the 
snare,  and  night  came  on  at  once.  That  is  to 
say,  the  sun  was  eclipsed.  "  Something  wrong 
up  there,"  thought  the  Indian,  "  I  must  have 
caught  the  Sun  ;  "  and  so  he  sent  up  ever  so 
many  animals  to  release  the  captive.  They  were 
all  burned  to  ashes,  but  at  last  the  mole,  going 
up  and  burrowing  out  through  the  ground  of 
the  sky,  (!)  succeeded  in  gnawing  asunder  the 
cords  of  the  snare.  Just  as  it  thrust  its  head 
out  through  the  opening  made  in  the  sky- 
ground,  it  received  a  flash  of  light  which  put 
its  eyes  out,  and  that  is  why  the  mole  is  blind. 
The  Sun  got  away,  but  has  ever  since  travelled 
more  deliberately.1 

These  sun-myths,  many  more  of  which  are 
to  be  found  collected  in  Mr.  Tylor's  excellent 
treatise  on  "  The  Early  History  of  Mankind," 
well  illustrate  both  the  similarity  and  the  di- 
versity of  the  results  obtained  by  the  primitive 

i  Tylor,  op.  fit.  pp.  338-343- 

231 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

mind,  in  different  times  and  countries,  when 
engaged  upon  similar  problems.  No  one  would 
think  of  referring  these  stories  to  a  common 
traditional  origin  with  the  myths  of  Herakles 
and  Odysseus ;  yet  both  classes  of  tales  were 
devised  to  explain  the  same  phenomenon.  Both 
to  the  Aryan  and  to  the  Polynesian  the  stead- 
fast but  deliberate  journey  of  the  sun  through 
the  firmament  was  a  strange  circumstance  which 
called  for  explanation  ;  but  while  the  meagre 
intelligence  of  the  barbarian  could  only  attain 
to  the  quaint  conception  of  a  man  throwing  a 
noose  over  the  sun's  head,  the  rich  imagination 
of  the  Indo-European  created  the  noble  picture 
of  Herakles  doomed  to  serve  the  son  of  Sthene- 
los,  in  accordance  with  the  resistless  decree  of 
fate. 

^  Another  world-wide  myth,  which  shows  how 
similar  are  the  mental  habits  of  uncivilized  men, 
is  the  myth  of  the  tortoise.  The  Hindu  notion 
of  a  great  tortoise  that  lies  beneath  the  earth 
and  keeps  it  from  falling  is  familiar  to  every 
reader.  According  to  one  account,  this  tortoise, 
swimming  in  the  primeval  ocean,  bears  the  earth 
on  his  back ;  but  by  and  by,  when  the  gods 
get  ready  to  destroy  mankind,  the  tortoise  will 
grow  weary  and  sink  under  his  load,  and  then 
the  earth  will  be  overwhelmed  by  a  deluge. 
Another  legend  tells  us  that  when  the  gods  and 
demons  took  Mount  Mandara  for  a  churning 
232 


MYTHS  OF  THE  BARBARIC  WORLD 

stick  and  churned  the  ocean  to  make  ambrosia, 
the  god  Vishnu  took  on  the  form  of  a  tortoise 
and  lay  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea,  as  a  pivot  for 
the  whirling  mountain  to  rest  upon.  But  these 
versions  of  the  myth  are  not  primitive.  In  the 
original  conception  the  world  is  itself  a  gigantic 
tortoise  swimming  in  a  boundless  ocean  ;  the 
flat  surface  of  the  earth  is  the  lower  plate  which 
covers  the  reptile's  belly;  the  rounded  shell 
which  covers  his  back  is  the  sky ;  and  the  hu- 
man race  lives  and  moves  and  has  its  being 
inside  of  the  tortoise.  Now,  as  Mr.  Tylor  has 
pointed  out,  many  tribes  of  Redskins  hold  sub- 
stantially the  same  theory  of  the  universe.  They 
regard  the  tortoise  as  the  symbol  of  the  world, 
and  address  it  as  the  mother  of  mankind.  Once, 
before  the  earth  was  made,  the  king  of  heaven 
quarrelled  with  his  wife,  and  gave  her  such  a 
terrible  kick  that  she  fell  down  into  the  sea. 
Fortunately  a  tortoise  received  her  on  his  back, 
and  proceeded  to  raise  up  the  earth,  upon  which 
the  heavenly  woman  became  the  mother  of 
mankind.  These  first  men  had  white  faces,  and 
they  used  to  dig  in  the  ground  to  catch  badgers. 
One  day  a  zealous  burro wer  thrust  his  knife  too 
far  and  stabbed  the  tortoise,  which  immediately 
sank  into  the  sea  and  drowned  all  the  human 
race  save  one  man.1  In  Finnish  mythology  the 
world  is  not  a  tortoise,  but  it  is  an  egg,  of  which 

1  Tylor,  op.  cit.  p.  336. 
233 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

the  white  part  is  the  ocean,  the  yolk  is  the 
earth,  and  the  arched  shell  is  the  sky.  In  India 
this  is  the  mundane  egg  of  Brahma ;  and  it 
reappears  among  the  Yorubas  as  a  pair  of  cal- 
abashes put  together  like  oyster  shells,  one 
making  a  dome  over  the  other.  In  Zululand 
the  earth  is  a  huge  beast  called  Usilosimapundu, 
whose  face  is  a  rock,  and  whose  mouth  is  very 
large  and  broad  and  red :  "  in  some  countries 
which  were  on  his  body  it  was  winter,  and  in 
others  it  was  early  harvest."  Many  broad  riv- 
ers flow  over  his  back,  and  he  is  covered  with 
forests  and  hills,  as  is  indicated  in  his  name, 
which  means  "  the  rugose  or  knotty-backed 
beast."  In  this  group  of  conceptions  may  be 
seen  the  origin  of  Sindbad's  great  fish,  which 
lay  still  so  long  that  sand  and  clay  gradually 
accumulated  upon  its  back,  and  at  last  it  be- 
came covered  with  trees.  And  lastly,  passing 
from  barbaric  folk-lore  and  from  the  Arabian 
Nights  to  the  highest  level  of  Indo-European 
intelligence,  do  we  not  find  both  Plato  and 
Kepler  amusing  themselves  with  speculations 
in  which  the  earth  figures  as  a  stupendous 
animal  ? 

November  y  1870. 


234 


VI 
JUVENTUS  MUNDI1 

TWELVE  years  ago,  when,  in  conclud- 
ing his  "  Studies  on  Homer  and  the 
Homeric  Age,"   Mr.   Gladstone   ap- 
plied to  himself  the  warning  addressed  by  Aga- 
memnon to  the  priest  of  Apollo,   "  Let  not 
Nemesis  catch  me  by  the  swift  ships, 

i)  vvv  BrjOvvovr',  f)  vorepov  av#is  tovra," 

he  would  seem  to  have  intended  it  as  a  last 
farewell  to  classical  studies.  Yet,  whatever  his 
intentions  may  have  been,  they  have  yielded  to 
the  sweet  desire  of  revisiting  familiar  ground, — 
a  desire  as  strong  in  the  breast  of  the  classical 
scholar  as  was  the  yearning  which  led  Odysseus 
to  reject  the  proffered  gift  of  immortality,  so 
that  he  might  but  once  more  behold  the 
wreathed  smoke  curling  about  the  roofs  of  his 
native  Ithaka.  In  this  new  treatise,  on  the 
"  Youth  of  the  World,"  Mr.  Gladstone  dis- 
cusses the  same  questions  which  were  treated 
in  his  earlier  work  ;  and  the  main  conclusions 

1  Juventus  Mundi.  The  Gods  and  Men  of  the  Heroic 
Age.  By  the  Rt.  Hon.  William  Ewart  Gladstone.  Bos- 
ton :  Little,  Brown  &  Co.  1869. 

235 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

reached  in  the  "  Studies  on  Homer  "  are  here 
so  little  modified  with  reference  to  the  recent 
progress  of  archaeological  inquiries  that  the  book 
can  hardly  be  said  to  have  had  any  other  reason 
for  appearing,  save  the  desire  of  loitering  by  the 
ships  of  the  Argives,  and  of  returning  thither 
as  often  as  possible. 

The  title  selected  by  Mr.  Gladstone  for  his 
new  work  is  either  a  very  appropriate  one  or  a 
strange  misnomer,  according  to  the  point  of 
view  from  which  it  is  regarded.  Such  being  the 
case,  we  might  readily  acquiesce  in  its  use,  and 
pass  it  by  without  comment,  trusting  that  the 
author  understood  himself  when  he  adopted  it, 
were  it  not  that  by  incidental  references,  and 
especially  by  his  allusions  to  the  legendary  lit- 
erature of  the  Jews,  Mr.  Gladstone  shows  that 
he  means  more  by  the  title  than  it  can  fairly 
be  made  to  express.  An  author  who  seeks  to 
determine  prehistoric  events  by  references  to 
Kadmos,  and  Danaos,  and  Abraham,  is  at  once 
liable  to  the  suspicion  of  holding  very  inade- 
quate views  as  to  the  character  of  the  epoch  which 
may  properly  be  termed  the  "  youth  of  the 
world."  Often  in  reading  Mr.  Gladstone  we  are 
reminded  of  Renan's  strange  suggestion  that  an 
exploration  of  the  Hindu  Kush  territory,  whence 
probably  came  the  primitive  Aryans,  might 
throw  some  new  light  on  the  origin  of  lan- 
guage. Nothing  could  well  be  more  futile.  The 
236 


JUVENTUS  MUNDI 

primitive  Aryan  language  has  already  been 
partly  reconstructed  for  us ;  its  grammatical 
forms  and  syntactic  devices  are  becoming  famil- 
iar to  scholars ;  one  great  philologist  has  even 
composed  a  tale  in  it ;  yet  in  studying  this  long- 
buried  dialect  we  are  not  much  nearer  the  first 
beginnings  of  human  speech  than  in  studying 
the  Greek  of  Homer,  the  Sanskrit  of  the  Vedas, 
or  the  Umbrian  of  the  Iguvine  Inscriptions. 
The  Aryan  mother-tongue  had  passed  into  the 
last  of  the  three  stages  of  linguistic  growth  long 
before  the  break-up  of  the  tribal  communities 
in  Aryana-vaedjo,  and  at  that  early  date  pre- 
sented a  less  primitive  structure  than  is  to  be 
seen  in  the  Chinese  or  the  Mongolian  of  our 
own  times.  So  the  state  of  society  depicted  in 
the  Homeric  poems,  and  well  illustrated  by 
Mr.  Gladstone,  is  many  degrees  less  primitive 
than  that  which  is  revealed  to  us  by  the  ar- 
chaeological researches  either  of  Pictet  and  Win- 
dischmann,  or  of  Tylor,  Lubbock,  and  M'Len- 
nan.  We  shall  gather  evidences  of  this  as  we 
proceed.  Meanwhile  let  us  remember  that  at 
least  eleven  thousand  years  before  the  Homeric 
age  men  lived  in  communities,  and  manufac- 
tured pottery  on  the  banks  of  the  Nile  ;  and  let 
us  not  leave  wholly  out  of  sight  that  more  dis- 
tant period,  perhaps  a  million  years  ago,  when 
sparse  tribes  of  savage  men,  contemporaneous 
with  the  mammoths  of  Siberia  and  the  cave- 
237 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

tigers  of  Britain,  struggled  against  the  intense 
cold  of  the  glacial  winters. 

Nevertheless,  though  the  Homeric  age  ap- 
pears to  be  a  late  one  when  considered  with 
reference  to  the  whole  career  of  the  human  race, 
there  is  a  point  of  view  from  which  it  may  be 
justly  regarded  as  the  "  youth  of  the  world." 
However  long  man  may  have  existed  upon  the 
earth,  he  becomes  thoroughly  and  distinctly 
human  in  the  eyes  of  the  historian  only  at  the 
epoch  at  which  he  began  to  create  for  himself 
a  literature.  As  far  back  as  we  can  trace  the 
progress  of  the  human  race  continuously  by 
means  of  the  written  word,  so  far  do  we  feel  a 
true  historical  interest  in  its  fortunes,  and  pur- 
sue our  studies  with  a  sympathy  which  the  mere 
lapse  of  time  is  powerless  to  impair.  But  the 
primeval  man,  whose  history  never  has  been  and 
never  will  be  written,  whose  career  on  the  earth, 
dateless  and  chartless,  can  be  dimly  revealed  to  us 
only  by  palaeontology,  excites  in  us  a  very  differ- 
ent feeling.  Though  with  the  keenest  interest  we 
ransack  every  nook  and  corner  of  the  earth's  sur- 
face for  information  about  him,  we  are  all  the 
while  aware  that  what  we  are  studying  is  human 
zoology  and  not  history.  Our  Neanderthal 
man  is  a  specimen,  not  a  character.  We  can- 
not ask  him  the  Homeric  question,  what  is  his 
name,  who  were  his  parents,  and  how  did  he 
get  where  we  found  him.  His  language  has  died 
238 


JUVENTUS  MUNDI 

with  him,  and  he  can  render  no  account  of  him- 
self. We  can  only  regard  him  specifically  as 
Homo  AnthropoS)  a  creature  of  bigger  brain  than 
his  congener  Homo  Pithekos,  and  of  vastly 
greater  promise.  But  this,  we  say,  is  physical 
science,  and  not  history. 

For  the  historian,  therefore,  who  studies  man 
in  his  various  social  relations',  the  youth  of  the 
world  is  the  period  at  which  literature  begins. 
We  regard  the  history  of  the  western  world  as 
beginning  about  the  tenth  century  before  the 
Christian  era,  because  at  that  date  we  find  litera- 
ture, in  Greece  and  Palestine,  beginning  to  throw 
direct  light  upon  the  social  and  intellectual  con- 
dition of  a  portion  of  mankind.  That  great 
empires,  rich  in  historical  interest  and  in  mate- 
rials for  sociological  generalizations,  had  existed 
for  centuries  before  that  date,  in  Egypt  and 
Assyria,  we  do  not  doubt,  since  they  appear  at 
the  dawn  of  history  with  all  the  marks  of  great 
antiquity ;  but  the  only  steady  historical  light 
thrown  upon  them  shines  from  the  pages  of 
Greek  and  Hebrew  authors,  and  these  know 
them  only  in  their  latest  period.  For  informa- 
tion concerning  their  early  careers  we  must  look, 
not  to  history,  but  to  linguistic  archaeology,  a 
science  which  can  help  us  to  general  results,  but 
cannot  enable  us  to  fix  dates,  save  in  the  crudest 
manner. 

We  mention  the  tenth  century  before  Christ 
239 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

as  the  earliest  period  at  which  we  can  begin  to 
study  human  society  in  general  and  Greek  so- 
ciety in  particular,  through  the  medium  of  litera- 
ture. But,  strictly  speaking,  the  epoch  in  question 
is  one  which  cannot  be  fixed  with  accuracy.  The 
earliest  ascertainable  date  in  Greek  history  is 
that  of  the  Olympiad  of  Koroibos,  B.  c.  776. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  the  Homeric  poems 
were  written  before  this  date,  and  that  Homer 
is  therefore  strictly  prehistoric.  Had  this  fact 
been  duly  realized  by  those  scholars  who  have 
not  attempted  to  deny  it,  a  vast  amount  of  profit- 
less discussion  might  have  been  avoided.  Sooner 
or  later,  as  Grote  says,  "  the  lesson  must  be 
learnt,  hard  and  painful  though  it  be,  that  no 
imaginable  reach  of  critical  acumen  will  of  itself 
enable  us  to  discriminate  fancy  from  reality,  in 
the  absence  of  a  tolerable  stock  of  evidence." 
We  do  not  know  who  Homer  was  ;  we  do  not 
know  where  or  when  he  lived ;  and  in  all  prob- 
ability we  shall  never  know.  The  data  for  set- 
tling the  question  are  not  now  accessible,  and  it 
is  not  likely  that  they  will  ever  be  discovered. 
Even  in  early  antiquity  the  question  was  wrapped 
in  an  obscurity  as  deep  as  that  which  shrouds  it 
to-day.  The  case  between  the  seven  or  eight 
cities  which  claimed  to  be  the  birthplace  of  the 
poet,  and  which  Welcker  has  so  ably  discussed, 
cannot  be  decided.  The  feebleness  of  the  evi- 
dence brought  into  court  may  be  judged  from 
240 


JUVENTUS  MUNDI 

the  fact  that  the  claims  of  Chios  and  the  story 
of  the  poet's  blindness  rest  alike  upon  a  doubtful 
allusion  in  the  Hymn  to  Apollo,  which  Thu- 
kydides  (iii.  104)  accepted  as  authentic.  The 
majority  of  modern  critics  have  consoled  them- 
selves with  the  vague  conclusion  that,  as  between 
the  two  great  divisions  of  the  early  Greek  world, 
Homer  at  least  belonged  to  the  Asiatic.  But 
Mr.  Gladstone  has  shown  good  reasons  for 
doubting  this  opinion.  He  has  pointed  out  sev- 
eral instances  in  which  the  poems  seem  to  be- 
tray a  closer  topographical  acquaintance  with 
European  than  with  Asiatic  Greece,  and  con- 
cludes that  Athens  and  Argos  have  at  least  as 
good  a  claim  to  Homer  as  Chios  or  Smyrna. 

It  is  far  more  desirable  that  we  should  form 
an  approximate  opinion  as  to  the  date  of  the 
Homeric  poems  than  that  we  should  seek  to 
determine  the  exact  locality  in  which  they  ori- 
ginated. Yet  the  one  question  is  hardly  less 
obscure  than  the  other.  Different  writers  of 
antiquity  assigned  eight  different  epochs  to 
Homer,  of  which  the  earliest  is  separated  from 
the  most  recent  by  an  interval  of  four  hundred 
and  sixty  years,  —  a  period  as  long  as  that  which 
separates  the  Black  Prince  from  the  Duke  of 
Wellington,  or  the  age  of  Perikles  from  the 
Christian  era.  While  Theopompos  quite  pre- 
posterously brings  him  down  as  late  as  the 
twenty-third  Olympiad,  Krates  removes  him  to 
241 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

the  twelfth  century  B.  c.  The  date  ordinarily 
accepted  by  modern  critics  is  the  one  assigned 
by  Herodotos,  880  B.  c.  Yet  Mr.  Gladstone 
shows  reasons,  which  appear  to  me  convincing, 
for  doubting  or  rejecting  this  date. 

I  refer  to  the  much-abused  legend  of  the 
Children  of  Herakles,  which  seems  capable  of 
yielding  an  item  of  trustworthy  testimony,  pro- 
vided it  be  circumspectly  dealt  with.  I  differ 
from  Mr.  Gladstone  in  not  regarding  the  legend 
as  historical  in  its  present  shape.  In  my  appre- 
hension, Hyllos  and  Oxylos,  as  historical  per- 
sonages, have  no  value  whatever  ;  and  I  faith- 
fully follow  Mr.  Grote,  in  refusing  to  accept  any 
date  earlier  than  the  Olympiad  of  Koroibos. 
The  tale  of  the  "  Return  of  the  Herakleids  "  is 
undoubtedly  as  unworthy  of  credit  as  the  legend 
of  Hengst  and  Horsa  ;  yet,  like  the  latter,  it 
doubtless  embodies  a  historical  occurrence.  One 
cannot  approve,  as  scholarlike  or  philosophical, 
the  scepticism  of  Mr.  Cox,  who  can  see  in 
the  whole  narrative  nothing  but  a  solar  myth. 
There  certainly  was  a  time  when  the  Dorian 
tribes  —  described  in  the  legend  as  the  allies  of 
the  Children  of  Herakles  —  conquered  Pelo- 
ponnesos  ;  and  that  time  was  certainly  subse- 
quent to  the  composition  of  the  Homeric  poems. 
It  is  incredible  that  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey 
should  ignore  the  existence  of  Dorians  in  Pelo- 
ponnesos,  if  there  were  Dorians  not  only  dwell- 
242 


JUVENTUS  MUNDI 

ing  but  ruling  there  at  the  time  when  the  poems 
were  written.  The  poems  are  very  accurate  and 
rigorously  consistent  in  their  use  of  ethnical 
appellatives  ;  and  their  author,  in  speaking  of 
Achaians  and  Argives,  is  as  evidently  alluding 
to  peoples  directly  known  to  him  as  is  Shake- 
speare when  he  mentions  Danes  and  Scotchmen. 
Now  Homer  knows  Achaians,  Argives,  and 
Pelasgians  dwelling  in  Peloponnesos  ;  and  he 
knows  Dorians  also,  but  only  as  a  people  inhab- 
iting Crete.  (Odyss.  xix.  175.)  With  Homer, 
moreover,  the  Hellenes  are  not  the  Greeks  in 
general,  but  only  a  people  dwelling  in  the  north, 
inThessaly.  When  these  poems  were  written, 
Greece  was  not  known  as  Hellas,  but  as  Achaia, 
—  the  whole  country  taking  its  name  from  the 
Achaians,  the  dominant  race  in  Peloponnesos. 
Now  at  the  beginning  of  the  truly  historical 
period,  in  the  eighth  century  B.  c.,  all  this  is 
changed.  The  Greeks  as  a  people  are  called 
Hellenes  ;  the  Dorians  rule  in  Peloponnesos, 
while  their  lands  are  tilled  by  Argive  Helots  ; 
and  the  Achaians  appear  only  as  an  insignificant 
people  occupying  the  southern  shore  of  the 
Corinthian  Gulf.  How  this  change  took  place 
we  cannot  tell.  The  explanation  of  it  can  never 
be  obtained  from  history,  though  some  light 
may  perhaps  be  thrown  upon  it  by  linguistic 
archaeology.  But  at  all  events  it  was  a  great 
change,  and  could  not  have  taken  place  in  a 
243 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

moment.  It  is  fair  to  suppose  that  the  Helleno- 
Dorian  conquest  must  have  begun  at  least  a 
century  before  the  first  Olympiad  ;  for  other- 
wise the  geographical  limits  of  the  various  Greek 
races  would  not  have  been  so  completely  estab- 
lished as  we  find  them  to  have  been  at  that 
date.  The  Greeks,  indeed,  supposed  it  to  have 
begun  at  least  three  centuries  earlier,  but  it  is 
impossible  to  collect  evidence  which  will  either 
refute  or  establish  that  opinion.  For  our  pur- 
poses it  is  enough  to  know  that  the  conquest 
could  not  have  taken  place  later  than  900  B.  c. ; 
and  if  this  be  the  case,  the  minimum  date  for  the 
composition  of  the  Homeric  poems  must  be  the 
tenth  century  before  Christ ;  which  is,  in  fact, 
the  date  assigned  by  Aristotle.  Thus  far,  and  no 
farther,  I  believe  it  possible  to  go  with  safety. 
Whether  the  poems  were  composed  in  the  tenth, 
eleventh,  or  twelfth  century  cannot  be  deter- 
mined. We  are  justified  only  in  placing  them 
far  enough  back  to  allow  the  Helleno-Dorian 
conquest  to  intervene  between  their  composi- 
tion and  the  beginning  of  recorded  history.  The 
tenth  century  B.  c.  is  the  latest  date  which  will 
account  for  all  the  phenomena  involved  in  the 
case,  and  with  this  result  we  must  be  satisfied. 
Even  on  this  showing,  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey 
appear  as  the  oldest  existing  specimens  of  Aryan 
literature,  save  perhaps  the  hymns  of  the  Rig- 
Veda  and  the  sacred  books  of  the  Avesta. 
244 


JUVENTUS  MUNDI 

The  apparent  difficulty  of  preserving  such 
long  poems  for  three  or  four  centuries  without 
the  aid  of  writing  may  seem  at  first  sight  to  jus- 
tify the  hypothesis  of  Wolf,  that  they  are  mere 
collections  of  ancient  ballads,  like  those  which 
make  up  the  Mahabharata,  preserved  in  the 
memories  of  a  dozen  or  twenty  bards,  and  first 
arranged  under  the  orders  of  Peisistratos.  But 
on  a  careful  examination  this  hypothesis  is  seen 
to  raise  more  difficulties  than  it  solves.  What 
was  there  in  the  position  of  Peisistratos,  or  of 
Athens  itself  in  the  sixth  century  B.  c.,  so  au- 
thoritative as  to  compel  all  Greeks  to  recognize 
the  recension  then  and  there  made  of  their  re- 
vered poet  ?  Besides  which  the  celebrated  ordi- 
nance of  Solon  respecting  the  rhapsodes  at  the 
Panathenaia  obliges  us  to  infer  the  existence  of 
written  manuscripts  of  Homer  previous  to  550 
B.  c.  As  Mr.  Grote  well  observes,  the  inter- 
ference of  Peisistratos  "  presupposes  a  certain 
foreknown  and  ancient  aggregate,  the  main  line- 
aments of  which  were  familiar  to  the  Grecian 
public,  although  many  of  the  rhapsodes  in  their 
practice  may  have  deviated  from  it  both  by 
omission  and  interpolation.  In  correcting  the 
Athenian  recitations  conformably  with  such  un- 
derstood general  type,  Peisistratos  might  hope 
both  to  procure  respect  for  Athens  and  to  con- 
stitute a  fashion  for  the  rest  of  Greece.  But 
this  step  of  *  collecting  the  torn  body  of  sacred 
245 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

Homer  '  is  something  generically  different  from 
the  composition  of  a  new  Iliad  out  of  preexist- 
ing songs  :  the  former  is  as  easy,  suitable,  and 
promising  as  the  latter  is  violent  and  gratui- 
tous." l 

As  for  Wolf's  objection,  that  the  Iliad  and 
Odyssey  are  too  long  to  have  been  preserved 
by  memory,  it  may  be  met  by  a  simple  denial. 
It  is  a  strange  objection  indeed,  coming  from  a 
man  of  Wolfs  retentive  memory.  I  do  not  see 
how  the  acquisition  of  the  two  poems  can  be 
regarded  as  such  a  very  arduous  task  ;  and  if 
literature  were  as  scanty  now  as  in  Greek  an- 
tiquity, there  are  doubtless  many  scholars  who 
would  long  since  have  had  them  at  their  tongues' 
end.  Sir  G.  C.  Lewis,  with  but  little  conscious 
effort,  managed  to  carry  in  his  head  a  very  con- 
siderable portion  of  Greek  and  Latin  classic  lit- 
erature ;  and  Niebuhr  (who  once  restored  from 
recollection  a  book  of  accounts  which  had  been 
accidentally  destroyed)  was  in  the  habit  of  refer- 
ring to  book  and  chapter  of  an  ancient  author 
without  consulting  his  notes.  Nay,  there  is  Pro- 
fessor Sophocles,  of  Harvard  University,  who, 
if  you  suddenly  stop  and  interrogate  him  in  the 
street,  will  tell  you  just  how  many  times  any 
given  Greek  word  occurs  in  Thukydides,  or  in 
^Eschylos,  or  in  Plato,  and  will  obligingly  re- 
hearse for  you  the  context.  If  all  extant  copies 
1  Hist.  Greece,  vol.  ii.  p.  208. 

246 


JUVENTUS  MUNDI 

of  the  Homeric  poems  were  to  be  gathered  to- 
gether and  burnt  up  to-day,  like  Don  Quixote's 
library,  or  like  those  Arabic  manuscripts  of 
which  Cardinal  Ximenes  made  a  bonfire  in  the 
streets  of  Granada,  the  poems  could  very  likely 
be  reproduced  and  orally  transmitted  for  sev- 
eral generations ;  and  much  easier  must  it  have 
been  for  the  Greeks  to  preserve  these  books, 
which  their  imagination  invested  with  a  quasi- 
sanctity,  and  which  constituted  the  greater  part 
of  the  literary  furniture  of  their  minds.  In 
Xenophon's  time  there  were  educated  gentle- 
men at  Athens  who  could  repeat  both  Iliad  and 
Odyssey  verbatim.  (Xenoph.  Sympos.,  in.  5.) 
Besides  this,  we  know  that  at  Chios  there  was  a 
company  of  bards,  known  as  Homerids,  whose 
business  it  was  to  recite  these  poems  from 
memory  ;  and  from  the  edicts  of  Solon  and  the 
Sikyonian  Kleisthenes  (Herod.,  v.  67),  we  may 
infer  that  the  case  was  the  same  in  other  parts 
of  Greece.  Passages  from  the  Iliad  used  to  be 
sung  at  the  Pythian  festivals,  to  the  accompani- 
ment of  the  harp  (Athenaeus,  xiv.  638),  and  in 
at  least  two  of  the  Ionic  islands  of  the  ^Egaean 
there  were  regular  competitive  exhibitions  by 
trained  young  men,  at  which  prizes  were  given 
to  the  best  reciter.  The  difficulty  of  preserving 
the  poems,  under  such  circumstances,  becomes 
very  insignificant ;  and  the  Wolfian  argument 
quite  vanishes  when  we  reflect  that  it  would 
247 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

have  been  no  easier  to  preserve  a  dozen  or 
twenty  short  poems  than  two  long  ones.  Nay, 
the  coherent,  orderly  arrangement  of  the  Iliad 
and  Odyssey  would  make  them  even  easier  to 
remember  than  a  group  of  short  rhapsodies  not 
consecutively  arranged. 

When  we  come  to  interrogate  the  poems 
themselves,  we  find  in  them  quite  convincing 
evidence  that  they  were  originally  composed  for 
the  ear  alone,  and  without  reference  to  manu- 
script assistance.  They  abound  in  catchwords 
and  in  verbal  repetitions.  The  "  Catalogue  of 
Ships,"  as  Mr.  Gladstone  has  acutely  observed, 
is  arranged  in  well-defined  sections,  in  such  a 
way  that  the  end  of  each  section  suggests  the 
beginning  of  the  next  one.  It  resembles  the 
versus  memoriales  found  in  old-fashioned  gram- 
mars. But  the  most  convincing  proof  of  all  is 
to  be  found  in  the  changes  which  Greek  pro- 
nunciation went  through  between  the  ages  of 
Homer  and  Peisistratos.  "  At  the  time  when 
these  poems  were  composed,  the  digamma  (or 
w)  was  an  effective  consonant,  and  figured  as 
such  in  the  structure  of  the  verse  ;  at  the  time 
when  they  were  committed  to  writing,  it  had 
ceased  to  be  pronounced,  and  therefore  never 
found  a  place  in  any  of  the  manuscripts,  —  in- 
somuch that  the  Alexandrian  critics,  though 
they  knew  of  its  existence  in  the  much  later 
poems  of  Alkaios  and  Sappho,  never  recognized 
248 


JUVENTUS  MUNDI 

it  in  Homer.  The  hiatus,  and  the  various  per- 
plexities of  metre,  occasioned  by  the  loss  of  the 
digamma,  were  corrected  by  different  grammat- 
ical stratagems.  But  the  whole  history  of  this 
lost  letter  is  very  curious,  and  is  rendered  intel- 
ligible only  by  the  supposition  that  the  Iliad 
and  Odyssey  belonged  for  a  wide  space  of  time 
to  the  memory,  the  voice,  and  the  ear  exclu- 
sively." 1 

Many  of  these  facts  are  of  course  fully  recog- 
nized by  the  Wolfians  ;  but  the  inference  drawn 
from  them,  that  the  Homeric  poems  began  to 
exist  in  a  piecemeal  condition,  is,  as  we  have 
seen,  unnecessary.  These  poems  may  indeed  be 
compared,  in  a  certain  sense,  with  the  early  sa- 
cred and  epic  literature  of  the  Jews,  Indians, 
and  Teutons.  But  if  we  assign  a  plurality  of 
composers  to  the  Psalms  and  Pentateuch,  the 
Mahabharata,  the  Vedas,  and  the  Edda,  we  do 
so  because  of  internal  evidence  furnished  by 
the  books  themselves,  and  not  because  these 
books  could  not  have  been  preserved  by  oral 
tradition.  Is  there,  then,  in  the  Homeric  poems 
any  such  internal  evidence  of  dual  or  plural 
origin  as  is  furnished  by  the  interlaced  Elohis- 
tic  and  Jehovistic  documents  of  the  Pentateuch  ? 
A  careful  investigation  will  show  that  there  is 
not.  Any  scholar  who  has  given  some  attention 
to  the  subject  can  readily  distinguish  the  Elo- 
1  Grote,  Hist.  Greece,  vol.  ii.  p.  198. 
249 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

histic  from  the  Jehovistic  portions  of  the  Penta- 
teuch ;  and,  save  in  the  case  of  a  few  sporadic 
verses,  most  Biblical  critics  coincide  in  the  sepa- 
ration which  they  make  between  the  two.  But 
the  attempts  which  have  been  made  to  break 
up  the  Iliad. and  Odyssey  have  resulted  in  no 
such  harmonious  agreement.  There  are  as  many 
systems  as  there  are  critics,  and  naturally  enough. 
For  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  are  as  much  alike 
as  two  peas,  and  the  resemblance  which  holds 
between  the  two  holds  also  between  the  differ- 
ent parts  of  each  poem.  From  the  appearance  of 
the  injured  Chryses  in  the  Grecian  camp  down 
to  the  intervention  of  Athene  on  the  field  of 
contest  at  Ithaka,  we  find  in  each  book  and  in 
each  paragraph  the  same  style,  the  same  pecu- 
liarities of  expression,  the  same  habits  of  thought, 
the  same  quite  unique  manifestations  of  the 
faculty  of  observation.  Now  if  the  style  were 
commonplace,  the  observation  slovenly,  or  the 
thought  trivial,  as  is  wont  to  be  the  case  in 
ballad  literature,  this  argument  from  similarity 
might  not  carry  with  it  much  conviction.  But 
when  we  reflect  that  throughout  the  whole  course 
of  human  history  no  other  works,  save  the  best 
tragedies  of  Shakespeare,  have  ever  been  writ- 
ten which  for  combined  keenness  of  observa- 
tion, elevation  of  thought,  and  sublimity  of  style 
can  compare  with  the  Homeric  poems,  we  must 
admit  that  the  argument  has  very  great  weight 
250 


JUVENTUS  MUNDI 

indeed.  Let  us  take,  for  example,  the  sixth  and 
twenty-fourth  books  of  the  Iliad.  According 
to  the  theory  of  Lachmann,  the  most  eminent 
champion  of  the  Wolfian  hypothesis,  these  are 
by  different  authors.  Human  speech  has  per- 
haps never  been  brought  so  near  to  the  limit  of 
its  capacity  of  expressing  deep  emotion  as  in  the 
scene  between  Priam  and  Achilleus  in  the  twenty- 
fourth  book  ;  while  the  interview  between  Hek- 
tor  and  Andromache  in  the  sixth  similarly  well- 
nigh  exhausts  the  power  of  language.  Now,  the 
literary  critic  has  a  right  to  ask  whether  it  is 
probable  that  two  such  passages,  agreeing  per- 
fectly in  turn  of  expression,  and  alike  exhibiting 
the  same  unapproachable  degree  of  excellence, 
could  have  been  produced  by  two  different 
authors.  And  the  physiologist  —  with  some 
inward  misgivings  suggested  by  Mr.  Galton's 
theory  that  the  Greeks  surpassed  us  in  genius 
even  as  we  surpass  the  negroes  —  has  a  right  to 
ask  whether  it  is  in  the  natural  course  of  things 
for  two  such  wonderful  poets,  strangely  agreeing 
in  their  minutest  psychological  characteristics,  to 
be  produced  at  the  same  time.  And  the  diffi- 
culty thus  raised  becomes  overwhelming  when 
we  reflect  that  it  is  the  coexistence  of  not  two 
only,  but  at  least  twenty  such  geniuses  which 
the  Wolfian  hypothesis  requires  us  to  account 
for.  That  theory  worked  very  well  as  long  as 
scholars  thoughtlessly  assumed  that  the  Iliad 
251 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

and  Odyssey  were  analogous  to  ballad  poetry. 
But,  except  in  the  simplicity  of  the  primitive 
diction,  there  is  no  such  analogy.  The  power 
and  beauty  of  the  Iliad  are  never  so  hopelessly 
lost  as  when  it  is  rendered  into  the  style  of  a 
modern  ballad.  One  might  as  well  attempt  to 
preserve  the  grandeur  of  the  triumphant  close 
of  Milton's  Lycidas  by  turning  it  into  the  light 
Anacreontics  of  the  ode  to  "  Eros  stung  by  a 
Bee."  The  peculiarity  of  the  Homeric  poetry, 
which  defies  translation,  is  its  union  of  the  siirH 
plicity  characteristic  of  an  early  age  with  a  sus- 
tained elevation  of  style,  which  can  be  explained 
only  as  due  to  individual  genius. 

The  same  conclusion  is  forced  upon  us  when 
we  examine  the  artistic  structure  of  these  poems. 
With  regard  to  the  Odyssey  in  particular,  Mr. 
Grote  has  elaborately  shown  that  its  structure  is 
so  thoroughly  integral  that  no  considerable  por- 
tion could  be  subtracted  without  converting  the 
poem  into  a  more  or  less  admirable  fragment. 
The  Iliad  stands  in  a  somewhat  different  posi- 
tion. There  are  unmistakable  peculiarities  in 
its  structure,  which  have  led  even  Mr.  Grote, 
who  utterly  rejects  the  Wolfian  hypothesis,  to 
regard  it  as  made  up  of  two  poems ;  although 
he  inclines  to  the  belief  that  the  later  poem  was 
grafted  upon  the  earlier  by  its  own  author,  by 
way  of  further  elucidation  and  expansion  ;  just 
as  Goethe,  in  his  old  age,  added  a  new  part  to 
252 


JUVENTUS  MUNDI 

"  Faust."  According  to  Mr.  Grote,  the  Iliad,  as 
originally  conceived,  was  properly  an  Achilleis  ; 
its  design  being,  as  indicated  in  the  opening 
lines  of  the  poem,  to  depict  the  wrath  of  Achil- 
leus  and  the  unutterable  woes  which  it  entailed 
upon  the  Greeks.  The  plot  of  this  primitive 
Achilleis  is  entirely  contained  in  Books  I., 
VIII.,  and  XI. -XXII.  ;  and,  in  Mr.  Grote's 
opinion,  the  remaining  books  injure  the  sym- 
metry of  this  plot  by  unnecessarily  prolonging 
the  duration  of  the  Wrath,  while  the  embassy 
to  Achilleus,  in  the  ninth  book,  unduly  antici- 
pates the  conduct  of  Agamemnon  in  the  nine- 
teenth, and  is  therefore,  as  a  piece  of  bungling 
work,  to  be  referred  to  the  hands  of  an  inferior 
interpolator.  Mr.  Grote  thinks  it  probable  that 
these  books,  with  the  exception  of  the  ninth, 
were  subsequently  added  by  the  poet,  with  a 
view  to  enlarging  the  original  Achilleis  into  a 
real  Iliad,  describing  the  war  of  the  Greeks 
against  Troy.  With  reference  to  this  hypothe- 
sis, I  gladly  admit  that  Mr.  Grote  is,  of  all 
men  now  living,  the  one  best  entitled  to  a  re- 
verential hearing  on  almost  any  point  connected 
with  Greek  antiquity.  Nevertheless  it  seems  to 
me  that  his  theory  rests  solely  upon  imagined 
difficulties  which  have  no  real  existence.  I  doubt 
if  any  scholar,  reading  the  Iliad  ever  so  much, 
would  ever  be  struck  by  these  alleged  inconsist- 
encies of  structure,  unless  they  were  suggested 
253 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

by  some  a  priori  theory.  And  I  fear  that  the 
Wolfian  theory,  in  spite  of  Mr.  Grote's  em- 
phatic rejection  of  it,  is  responsible  for  some  of 
these  over-refined  criticisms.  Even  as  it  stands, 
the  Iliad  is  not  an  account  of  the  war  against 
Troy.  It  begins  in  the  tenth  year  of  the  siege, 
and  it  does  not  continue  to  the  capture  of  the 
city.  It  is  simply  occupied  with  an  episode  in 
the  war,  —  with  the  wrath  of  Achilleus  and  its 
consequences,  according  to  the  plan  marked  out 
in  the  opening  lines.  The  supposed  additions, 
therefore,  though  they  may  have  given  to  the 
poem  a  somewhat  wider  scope,  have  not  at  any 
rate  changed  its  primitive  character  of  an  Achil- 
leis.  To  my  mind  they  seem  even  called  for 
by  the  original  conception  of  the  consequences 
of  the  wrath.  To  have  inserted  the  battle  at 
the  ships,  in  which  Sarpedon  breaks  down  the 
wall  of  the  Greeks,  immediately  after  the  occur- 
rences of  the  first  book,  would  have  been  too 
abrupt  altogether.  Zeus,  after  his  reluctant 
promise  to  Thetis,  must  not  be  expected  so 
suddenly  to  exhibit  such  fell  determination. 
And  after  the  long  series  of  books  describing 
the  valorous  deeds  of  Aias,  Diomedes,  Aga- 
memnon, Odysseus,  and  Menelaos,  the  power- 
ful intervention  of  Achilleus  appears  in  far 
grander  proportions  than  would  otherwise  be 
possible.  As  for  the  embassy  to  Achilleus,  in 
the  ninth  book,  I  am  unable  to  see  how  the 
254 


JUVENTUS  MUNDI 

final  reconciliation  with  Agamemnon  would  be 
complete  without  it.  As  Mr.  Gladstone  well 
observes,  what  Achilleus  wants  is  not  restitu- 
tion, but  apology  ;  and  Agamemnon  offers  no 
apology  until  the  nineteenth  book.  In  his  an- 
swer to  the  ambassadors,  Achilleus  scornfully 
rejects  the  proposals  which  imply  that  the 
mere  return  of  Briseis  will  satisfy  his  righteous 
resentment,  unless  it  be  accompanied  with  that 
public  humiliation  to  which  circumstances  have 
not  yet  compelled  the  leader  of  the  Greeks  to 
subject  himself.  Achilleus  is  not  to  be  bought 
or  cajoled.  Even  the  extreme  distress  of  the 
Greeks  in  the  thirteenth  book  does  not  prevail 
upon  him  ;  nor  is  there  anything  in  the  poem 
to  show  that  he  ever  would  have  laid  aside  his 
wrath,  had  not  the  death  of  Patroklos  supplied 
him  with  a  new  and  wholly  unforeseen  motive. 
It  seems  to  me  that  his  entrance  into  the  bat- 
tle after  the  death  of  his  friend  would  lose  half 
its  poetic  effect,  were  it  not  preceded  by  some 
such  scene  as  that  in  the  ninth  book,  in  which 
he  is  represented  as  deaf  to  all  ordinary  induce- 
ments. As  for  the  two  concluding  books,  which 
Mr.  Grote  is  inclined  to  regard  as  a  subsequent 
addition,  not  necessitated  by  the  plan  of  the 
poem,  I  am  at  a  loss  to  see  how  the  poem  can  be 
considered  complete  without  them.  To  leave 
the  bodies  of  Patroklos  and  Hektor  unburied 
would  be  in  the  highest  degree  shocking  to 
255 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

Greek  religious  feelings.  Remembering  the 
sentence  incurred,  in  far  less  superstitious  times, 
by  the  generals  at  Arginusai,  it  is  impossible  to 
believe  that  any  conclusion  which  left  Patroklos's 
manes  unpropitiated,  and  the  mutilated  corpse 
of  Hektor  unransomed,  could  have  satisfied 
either  the  poet  or  his  hearers.  For  further  par- 
ticulars I  must  refer  the  reader  to  the  excellent 
criticisms  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  and  also  to  the 
article  on  "  Greek  History  and  Legend  "  in  the 
second  volume  of  Mr.  Mill's  "  Dissertations 
and  Discussions."  A  careful  study  of  the  argu- 
ments of  these  writers,  and,  above  all,  a  thor- 
ough and  independent  examination  of  the  Iliad 
itself,  will,  I  believe,  convince  the  student  that 
this  great  poem  is  from  beginning  to  end  the 
consistent  production  of  a  single  author. 

The  arguments  of  those  who  would  attribute 
the  Iliad  and  Odyssey,  taken  as  wholes,  to  two 
different  authors,  rest  chiefly  upon  some  appar- 
ent discrepancies  in  the  mythology  of  the  two 
poems  ;  but  many  of  these  difficulties  have  been 
completely  solved  by  the  recent  progress  of  the 
science  of  comparative  mythology.  Thus,  for 
example,  the  fact  that,  in  the  Iliad,  Hephaistos 
is  called  the  husband  of  Charis,  while  in  the 
Odyssey  he  is  called  the  husband  of  Aphrodite, 
has  been  cited  even  by  Mr.  Grote  as  evidence 
that  the  two  poems  are  not  by  the  same  author. 
It  seems  to  me  that  one  such  discrepancy,  in 


JUVENTUS  MUNDI 

the  midst  of  complete  general  agreement,  would 
be  much  better  explained  as  Cervantes  explained 
his  own  inconsistency  with  reference  to  the  steal- 
ing of  Sancho's  mule,  in  the  twenty-second 
chapter  of  "  Don  Quixote."  But  there  is  no 
discrepancy.  Aphrodite,  though  originally  the 
moon-goddess,  like  the  German  Horsel,  had 
before  Homer's  time  acquired  many  of  the  at- 
tributes of  the  dawn-goddess  Athene,  while  her 
lunar  characteristics  had  been  to  a  great  extent 
transferred  to  Artemis  and  Persephone.  In  her 
renovated  character,  as  goddess  of  the  dawn, 
Aphrodite  became  identified  with  Charis,  who 
appears  in  the  Rig- Veda  as  dawn-goddess.  In 
the  post-Homeric  mythology,  the  two  were 
again  separated,  and  Charis,  becoming  divided 
in  personality,  appears  as  the  Charites,  or 
Graces,  who  were  supposed  to  be  constant  at- 
tendants of  Aphrodite.  But  in  the  Homeric 
poems  the  two  are  still  identical,  and  either 
Charis  or  Aphrodite  may  be  called  the  wife  of 
the  fire-god,  without  inconsistency. 

Thus  to  sum  up,  I  believe  that  Mr.  Glad- 
stone is  quite  right  in  maintaining  that  both  the 
Iliad  and  Odyssey  are,  from  beginning  to  end, 
with  the  exception  of  a  few  insignificant  inter- 
polations, the  work  of  a  single  author,  whom 
we  have  no  ground  for  calling  by  any  other 
name  than  that  of  Homer.  I  believe,  more- 
over, that  this  author  lived  before  the  begin- 
257 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

ning  of  authentic  history,  and  that  we  can  de- 
termine neither  his  age  nor  his  country  with 
precision.  We  can  only  decide  that  he  was  a 
Greek  who  lived  at  some  time  previous  to  the 
year  900  B.  c. 

Here,  however,  I  must  begin  to  part  com- 
pany with  Mr.  Gladstone,  and  shall  henceforth 
unfortunately  have  frequent  occasion  to  differ 
from  him  on  points  of  fundamental  importance. 
For  Mr.  Gladstone  not  only  regards  the  Ho- 
meric age  as  strictly  within  the  limits  of  authentic 
history,  but  he  even  goes  much  further  than 
this.  He  would  not  only  fix  the  date  of  Homer 
positively  in  the  twelfth  century  B.  c.,  but  he 
regards  the  Trojan  war  as  a  purely  historical 
event,  of  which  Homer  is  the  authentic  histo- 
rian and  the  probable  eye-witness.  Nay,  he 
even  takes  the  word  of  the  poet  as  proof  con- 
clusive of  the  historical  character  of  events  hap- 
pening several  generations  before  the  Troika, 
according  to  the  legendary  chronology.  He 
not  only  regards  Agamemnon,  Achilleus,  and 
Paris  as  actual  personages,  but  he  ascribes  the 
same  reality  to  characters  like  Danaos,  Kadmos, 
and  Perseus,  and  talks  of  the  Pelopid  and 
Aiolid  dynasties,  and  the  empire  of  Minos, 
with  as  much  confidence  as  if  he  were  dealing 
with  Karlings  or  Capetians,  or  with  the  epoch 
of  the  Crusades. 

It  is  disheartening,  at  the  present  day,  and 

458 


JUVENTUS  MUNDI 

after  so  much  has  been  finally  settled  by  writers 
like  Grote,  Mommsen,  and  Sir  G.  C.  Lewis,  to 
come  upon  such  views  in  the  work  of  a  man  of 
scholarship  and  intelligence.  One  begins  to 
wonder  how  many  more  times  it  will  be  neces- 
sary to  prove  that  dates  and  events  are  of  no 
historical  value,  unless  attested  by  nearly  con- 
temporary evidence.  Pausanias  and  Plutarch 
were  able  men  no  doubt,  and  Thukydides  was 
a  profound  historian  ;  but  what  these  writers 
thought  of  the  Herakleid  invasion,  the  age  of 
Homer,  and  the  war  of  Troy,  can  have  no  great 
weight  with  the  critical  historian,  since  even  in 
the  time  of  Thukydides  these  events  were  as 
completely  obscured  by  lapse  of  time  as  they 
are  now.  There  is  no  literary  Greek  history  be- 
fore the  age  of  Hekataios  and  Herodotos,  three 
centuries  subsequent  to  the  first  recorded  Olym- 
piad. A  portion  of  this  period  is  satisfactorily 
covered  by  inscriptions,  but  even  these  fail  us 
before  we  get  within  a  century  of  this  earliest 
ascertainable  date.  Even  the  career  of  the  law- 
giver Lykourgos,  which  seems  to  belong  to  the 
commencement  of  the  eighth  century  B.  c.,  pre- 
sents us,  from  lack  of  anything  like  contem- 
porary records,  with  many  insoluble  problems. 
The  Heleno-Dorian  conquest,  as  we  have  seen, 
must  have  occurred  at  some  time  or  other  ;  but 
it  evidently  did  not  occur  within  two  centuries 
of  the  earliest  known  inscription,  and  it  is  there- 
259 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

fore  folly  to  imagine  that  we  can  determine  its 
date  or  ascertain  the  circumstances  which  at- 
tended it.  Anterior  to  this  event  there  is  but 
one  fact  in  Greek  antiquity  directly  known  to 
us>  —  the  existence  of  the  Homeric  poems. 
The  belief  that  there  was  a  Trojan  war  rests 
exclusively  upon  the  contents  of  those  poems  : 
there  is  no  other  independent  testimony  to  it 
whatever.  But  the  Homeric  poems  are  of  no 
value  as  testimony  to  the  truth  of  the  state- 
ments contained  in  them,  unless  it  can  be  proved 
that  their  author  was  either  contemporary  with 
the  Troika,  or  else  derived  his  information  from 
contemporary  witnesses.  This  can  never  be 
proved.  To  assume,  as  Mr.  Gladstone  does, 
that  Homer  lived  within  fifty  years  after  the 
Troika,  is  to  make  a  purely  gratuitous  assump- 
tion. For  aught  the  wisest  historian  can  tell, 
the  interval  may  have  been  five  hundred  years, 
or  a  thousand.  Indeed  the  Iliad  itself  expressly 
declares  that  it  is  dealing  with  an  ancient  state 
of  things  which  no  longer  exists.  It  is  difficult 
to  see  what  else  can  be  meant  by  the  statement 
that  the  heroes  of  the  Troika  belong  to  an  order 
of  men  no  longer  seen  upon  the  earth.  (Iliad, 
v.  304.)  Most  assuredly  Achilleus  the  son  of 
Thetis,  and  Sarpedon  the  son  of  Zeus,  and 
Helena  the  daughter  of  Zeus,  are  no  ordinary 
mortals,  such  as  might  have  been  seen  and  con- 
versed with  by  the  poet's  grandfather.  They  be- 
260 


JUVENTUS  MUNDI 

long  to  an  inferior  order  of  gods,  according  to 
the  peculiar  anthropomorphism  of  the  Greeks, 
in  which  deity  and  humanity  are  so  closely  min- 
gled that  it  is  difficult  to  tell  where  the  one 
begins  and  the  other  ends.  Diomedes,  single- 
handed,  vanquishes  not  only  the  gentle  Aphro- 
dite, but  even  the  god  of  battles  himself,  the 
terrible  Ares.  Nestor  quaffs  lightly  from  a  gob- 
let which,  we  are  told,  not  two  men  among  the 
poet's  contemporaries  could  by  their  united  ex- 
ertions raise  and  place  upon  a  table.  Aias  and 
Hektor  and  Aineias  hurl  enormous  masses  of 
rock  as  easily  as  an  ordinary  man  would  throw 
a  pebble.  All  this  shows  that  the  poet,  in  his 
naive  way,  conceiving  of  these  heroes  as  per- 
sonages of  a  remote  past,  was  endeavouring  as 
far  as  possible  to  ascribe  to  them  the  attributes 
of  superior  beings.  If  all  that  were  divine, 
marvellous,  or  superhuman  were  to  be  left  out 
of  the  poems,  the  supposed  historical  residue 
would  hardly  be  worth  the  trouble  of  saving. 
As  Mr.  Cox  well  observes,  "  It  is  of  the  very 
essence  of  the  narrative  that  Paris,  who  has  de- 
serted Oinone,  the  child  of  the  stream  Kebren, 
and  before  whom  Here,  Athene,  and  Aphro- 
dite had  appeared  as  claimants  for  the  golden 
apple,  steals  from  Sparta  the  beautiful  sister  of 
the  Dioskouroi ;  that  the  chiefs  are  summoned 
together  for  no  other  purpose  than  to  avenge 
her  woes  and  wrongs ;  that  Achilleus,  the  son 
261 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

of  the  sea-nymph  Thetis,  the  wielder  of  invin- 
cible weapons  and  the  lord  of  undying  horses, 
goes  to  fight  in  a  quarrel  which  is  not  his  own  ; 
that  his  wrath  is  roused  because  he  is  robbed  of 
the  maiden  Briseis,  and  that  henceforth  he  takes 
no  part  in  the  strife  until  his  friend  Patroklos 
has  been  slain ;  that  then  he  puts  on  the  new 
armour  which  Thetis  brings  to  him  from  the 
anvil  of  Hephaistos,  and  goes  forth  to  win  the 
victory.  The  details  are  throughout  of  the  same 
nature.  Achilleus  sees  and  converses  with 
Athene  ;  Aphrodite  is  wounded  by  Diomedes, 
and  Sleep  and  Death  bear  away  the  lifeless  Sar- 
pedon  on  their  noiseless  wings  to  the  far-off 
land  of  light."  In  view  of  all  this  it  is  evident 
that  Homer  was  not  describing,  like  a  salaried 
historiographer,  the  state  of  things  which  ex- 
isted in  the  time  of  his  father  or  grandfather. 
To  his  mind  the  occurrences  which  he  described 
were  those  of  a  remote,  a  wonderful,  a  semi- 
divine  past. 

This  conclusion,  which  I  have  thus  far  sup- 
ported merely  by  reference  to  the  Iliad  itself, 
becomes  irresistible  as  soon  as  we  take  into  ac- 
count the  results  obtained  during  the  past  thirty 
years  by  the  science  of  comparative  mythology. 
As  long  as  our  view  was  restricted  to  Greece, 
it  was  perhaps  excusable  that  Achilleus  and 
Paris  should  be  taken  for  exaggerated  copies  of 
actual  persons.  Since  the  day  when  Grimm  laid 
262 


JUVENTUS  MUNDI 

the  foundations  of  the  science  of  mythology,  all 
this  has  been  changed.  It  is  now  held  that 
Achilleus  and  Paris  and  Helena  are  to  be  found, 
not  only  in  the  Iliad,  but  also  in  the  Rig- Veda, 
and  therefore,  as  mythical  conceptions,  date, 
not  from  Homer,  but  from  a  period  preceding 
the  dispersion  of  the  Aryan  nations.  The  tale 
of  the  Wrath  of  Achilleus,  far  from  originating 
with  Homer,  far  from  being  recorded  by  the 
author  of  the  Iliad  as  by  an  eye-witness,  must 
have  been  known  in  its  essential  features  in 
Aryana-vaedjo,  at  that  remote  epoch  when  the 
Indian,  the  Greek,  and  the  Teuton  were  as  yet 
one  and  the  same.  For  the  story  has  been  re- 
tained by  the  three  races  alike,  in  all  its  prin- 
cipal features ;  though  the  Veda  has  left  it  in 
the  sky  where  it  originally  belonged,  while  the 
Iliad  and  the  Nibelungenlied  have  brought  it 
down  to  earth,  the  one  locating  it  in  Asia 
Minor,  and  the  other  in  Northwestern  Europe.1 

1  For  the  precise  extent  to  which  I  would  indorse  the 
theory  that  the  Iliad  myth  is  an  account  of  the  victory  of  light 
over  darkness,  let  me  refer  to  what  I  have  said  above  on  p. 
1 8  i .  I  do  not  suppose  that  the  struggle  between  light  and 
darkness  was  Homer's  subject  in  the  Iliad  any  more  than 
it  was  Shakespeare's  subject  in  Hamlet.  Homer's  subject 
was  the  wrath  of  the  Greek  hero,  as  Shakespeare's  subject 
was  the  vengeance  of  the  Danish  prince.  Nevertheless,  the 
story  of  Hamlet,  when  traced  back  to  its  Norse  original,  is  un- 
mistakably the  story  of  the  quarrel  between  summer  and  win- 
ter ;  and  the  moody  prince  is  as  much  a  solar  hero  as  Odin 
263 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

In  the  Rig- Veda  the  Panis  are  the  genii  of 
night  and  winter,  corresponding  to  the  Nibe- 
lungs,  or  "  Children  of  the  Mist,"  in  the  Teu- 
tonic legend,  and  to  the  children  of  Nephele 

himself.  See  Simrock,  Die  Quellen  des  Shakespeare,  i.  127— 
133.  Of  course  Shakespeare  knew  nothing  of  this,  as 
Homer  knew  nothing  of  the  origin  of  his  Achilleus.  The 
two  stories,  therefore,  are  not  to  be  taken  as  sun  myths  in 
their  present  form.  They  are  the  offspring  of  other  stories 
which  were  sun  myths  ;  they  are  stories  which  conform  to  the 
sun-myth  type  after  the  manner  above  illustrated  in  the  paper 
on  Light  and  Darkness.  [Hence  there  is  nothing  unintelligi- 
ble in  the  inconsistency  —  which  seems  to  puzzle  Max  Miil- 
ler  (Science  of  Language,  6th  ed.  vol.  ii.  p.  516,  note  20) 
—  of  investing  Paris  with  many  of  the  characteristics  of  the 
children  of  light.  Supposing,  as  we  must,  that  the  primitive 
sense  of  the  Iliad  myth  had  as  entirely  disappeared  in  the 
Homeric  age  as  the  primitive  sense  of  the  Hamlet  myth  had 
disappeared  in  the  times  of  Elizabeth,  the  fit  ground  for  won- 
der is  that  such  inconsistencies  are  not  more  numerous.]  The 
physical  theory  of  myths  will  be  properly  presented  and  com- 
prehended, only  when  it  is  understood  that  we  accept  the 
physical  derivation  of  such  stories  as  the  Iliad  myth  in  much 
the  same  way  that  we  are  bound  to  accept  the  physical  ety- 
mologies of  such  words  as  soul,  consider,  truth,  convince, 
deliberate,  and  the  like.  The  late  Dr.  Gibbs  of  Yale  Col- 
lege, in  his  Philological  Studies,  —  a  little  book  which  I 
used  to  read  with  delight  when  a  boy,  —  describes  such  ety- 
mologies as  "  faded  metaphors."  In  similar  wise,  while  re- 
fraining from  characterizing  the  Iliad  or  the  tragedy  of  Ham- 
let —  any  more  than  I  would  characterize  Le  Juif  Errant  by 
Sue,  or  La  Mais  on  Forestiere  by  Erckmann-Chatrian  —  as 
nature  myths,  I  would  at  the  same  time  consider  these  poems 
well  described  as  embodying  "  faded  nature-myths." 
264 


JUVENTUS  MUNDI 

(cloud)  in  the  Greek  myth  of  the  Golden 
Fleece.  The  Panis  steal  the  cattle  of  the  Sun 
(Indra,  Helios,  Herakles),  and  carry  them  by 
an  unknown  route  to  a  dark  cave  eastward. 
Sarama,  the  creeping  Dawn,  is  sent  by  Indra  to 
find  and  recover  them.  The  Panis  then  tamper 
with  Sarama,  and  try  their  best  to  induce  her 
to  betray  her  solar  lord.  For  a  while  she  is 
prevailed  upon  to  dally  with  them  ;  yet  she 
ultimately  returns  to  give  Indra  the  information 
needful  in  order  that  he  might  conquer  the 
Panis,  just  as  Helena,  in  the  slightly  altered 
version,  ultimately  returns  to  her  western  home, 
carrying  with  her  the  treasures  (/m/juara,  Iliad, 
ii.  285)  of  which  Paris  had  robbed  Menelaos. 
But,  before  the  bright  Indra  and  his  solar  he- 
roes can  reconquer  their  treasures  they  must 
take  captive  the  offspring  of  Brisaya,  the  violet 
light  of  morning.  Thus  Achilleus,  answering 
to  the  solar  champion  Aharyu,  takes  captive 
the  daughter  of  Brises.  But  as  the  sun  must 
always  be  parted  from  the  morning  light,  to 
return  to  it  again  just  before  setting,  so  Achil- 
leus loses  Briseis,  and  regains  her  only  just 
before  his  final  struggle.  In  similar  wise  Hera- 
kles is  parted  from  lole  ("  the  violet  one  "), 
and  Sigurd  from  Brynhild.  In  sullen  wrath  the 
hero  retires  from  the  conflict,  and  his  Myrmi- 
dons are  no  longer  seen  on  the  battlefield,  as 
the  sun  hides  behind  the  dark  cloud  and  his 
265 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

rays  no  longer  appear  about  him.  Yet  toward 
the  evening,  as  Briseis  returns,  he  appears  in 
his  might,  clothed  in  the  dazzling  armour 
wrought  for  him  by  the  fire-god  Hephaistos, 
and  with  his  invincible  spear  slays  the  great 
storm-cloud,  which  during  his  absence  had  well- 
nigh  prevailed  over  the  champions  of  the  day- 
light. But  his  triumph  is  short-lived  ;  for  hav- 
ing trampled  on  the  clouds  that  had  opposed 
him,  while  yet  crimsoned  with  the  fierce  car- 
nage, the  sharp  arrow  of  the  night-demon  Paris 
slays  him  at  the  Western  Gates.  We  have  not 
space  to  go  into  further  details.  In  Mr.  Cox's 
"  Mythology  of  the  Aryan  Nations,"  and 
"  Tales  of  Ancient  Greece,"  the  reader  will  find 
the  entire  contents  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey 
thus  minutely  illustrated  by  comparison  with 
the  Veda,  the  Edda,  and  the  Lay  of  the  Nibe- 
lungs. 

Ancient  as  the  Homeric  poems  undoubtedly 
are,  they  are  modern  in  comparison  with  the 
tale  of  Achilleus  and  Helena,  as  here  unfolded. 
The  date  of  the  entrance  of  the  Greeks  into 
Europe  will  perhaps  never  be  determined  ;  but 
I  do  not  see  how  any  competent  scholar  can 
well  place  it  at  less  than  eight  hundred  or  a 
thousand  years  before  the  time  of  Homer.  Be- 
tween the  two  epochs  the  Greek,  Latin,  Um- 
brian,  and  Keltic  languages  had  time  to  acquire 
distinct  individualities.  Far  earlier,  therefore, 
266 


JUVENTUS  MUNDI 

than  the  Homeric  "  juventus  mundi  "  was  that 
"  youth  of  the  world,"  in  which  the  Aryan 
forefathers,  knowing  no  abstract  terms,  and 
possessing  no  philosophy  but  fetichism,  delib- 
erately spoke  of  the  Sun,  and  the  Dawn,  and 
the  Clouds,  as  persons  or  as  animals.  The 
Veda,  though  composed  much  later  than  this, 
—  perhaps  as  late  as  the  Iliad,  —  nevertheless 
preserves  the  record  of  the  mental  life  of  this 
period.  The  Vedic  poet  is  still  dimly  aware 
that  Sarama  is  the  fickle  twilight,  and  the  Panis 
the  night-demons  who  strive  to  coax  her  from 
her  allegiance  to  the  day-god.  He  keeps  the 
scene  of  action  in  the  sky.  But  the  Homeric 
Greek  had  long  since  forgotten  that  Helena  and 
Paris  were  anything  more  than  semi-divine 
mortals,  the  daughter  of  Zeus  and  the  son  of 
the  Zeus-descended  Priam.  The  Hindu  under- 
stood that  Dyaus  ("  the  bright  one  ")  meant 
the  sky,  and  Sarama  ("  the  creeping  one  ")  the 
dawn,  and  spoke  significantly  when  he  called 
the  latter  the  daughter  of  the  former.  But  the 
Greek  could  not  know  that  Zeus  was  derived 
from  a  root  div,  "  to  shine,"  or  that  Helena 
belonged  to  a  root  sar>  "  to  creep."  Phonetic 
change  thus  helped  him  to  rise  from  fetichism 
to  polytheism.  His  nature-gods  became  thor- 
oughly anthropomorphic ;  and  he  probably  no 
more  remembered  that  Achilleus  originally  sig- 
nified the  sun,  than  we  remember  that  the  word 
267 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

God,  which  we  use  to  denote  the  most  vast  of 
conceptions,  originally  meant  simply  the  Storm- 
wind.  Indeed,  when  the  fetichistic  tendency 
led  the  Greek  again  to  personify  the  powers  of 
nature,  he  had  recourse  to  new  names  formed 
from  his  own  language.  Thus,  beside  Apollo 
we  have  Helios  ;  Selene  beside  Artemis  and 
Persephone  ;  Eos  beside  Athene  ;  Gaia  beside 
Demeter.  As  a  further  consequence  of  this  de- 
composition and  new  development  of  the  old 
Aryan  mythology,  we  find,  as  might  be  ex- 
pected, that  the  Homeric  poems  are  not  always 
consistent  in  their  use  of  their  mythic  materials. 
Thus,  Paris,  the  night-demon,  is  —  to  Max 
M  tiller's  perplexity  —  invested  with  many  of 
the  attributes  of  the  bright  solar  heroes.  "  Like 
Perseus,  Oidipous,  Romulus,  and  Cyrus,  he  is 
doomed  to  bring  ruin  on  his  parents  ;  like  them 
he  is  exposed  in  his  infancy  on  the  hillside, 
and  rescued  by  a  shepherd."  All  the  solar 
heroes  begin  life  in  this  way.  Whether,  like 
Apollo,  born  of  the  dark  night  (Leto),  or  like 
Oidipous,  of  the  violet  dawn  (lokaste),  they 
are  alike  destined  to  bring  destruction  on  their 
parents,  as  the  night  and  the  dawn  are  both 
destroyed  by  the  sun.  The  exposure  of  the 
child  in  infancy  represents  the  long  rays  of  the 
morning  sun  resting  on  the  hillside.  Then  Paris 
forsakes  Oinone  ("  the  wine-coloured  one "), 
but  meets  her  again  at  the  gloaming  when  she 
268 


JUVENTUS  MUNDI 

lays  herself  by  his  side  amid  the  crimson  flames 
of  the  funeral  pyre.  Sarpedon  also,  a  solar 
hero,  is  made  to  fight  on  the  side  of  the  Nibe- 
lungs  or  Trojans,  attended  by  his  friend 
Glaukos  ("  the  brilliant  one ").  They  com- 
mand the  Lykians,  or  "  children  of  light ;  "  and 
with  them  comes  also  Memnon,  son  of  the 
Dawn,  from  the  fiery  land  of  the  Aithiopes,  the 
favourite  haunt  of  Zeus  and  the  gods  of 
Olympos. 

The  Iliad  myth  must  therefore  have  been 
current  many  ages  before  the  Greeks  inhabited 
Greece,  long  before  there  was  any  Ilion  to  be 
conquered.  Nevertheless,  this  does  not  forbid 
the  supposition  that  the  legend,  as  we  have  it, 
may  have  been  formed  by  the  crystallization  of 
mythical  conceptions  about  a  nucleus  of  gen- 
uine tradition.  In  this  view  I  am  upheld  by  a 
most  sagacious  and  accurate  scholar,  Mr.  E.  A. 
Freeman,  who  finds  in  Carlovingian  romance 
an  excellent  illustration  of  the  problem  before 
us. 

The  Charlemagne  of  romance  is  a  mythical 
personage.  He  is  supposed  to  have  been  a 
Frenchman,  at  a  time  when  neither  the  French 
nation  nor  the  French  language  can  properly 
be  said  to  have  existed  ;  and  he  is  represented 
as  a  doughty  crusader,  although  crusading  was 
not  thought  of  until  long  after  the  Karolingian 
era.  The  legendary  deeds  of  Charlemagne  are 
269 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

not  conformed  to  the  ordinary  rules  of  geo- 
graphy and  chronology.  He  is  a  myth,  and, 
what  is  more,  he  is  a  solar  myth,  —  an  avatar, 
or  at  least  a  representative,  of  Odin  in  his  solar 
capacity.  If  in  his  case  legend  were  not  con- 
trolled and  rectified  by  history,  he  would  be  for 
us  as  unreal  as  Agamemnon. 

History,  however,  tells  us  that  there  was  an 
Emperor  Karl,  German  in  race,  name,  and  lan- 
guage, who  was  one  of  the  two  or  three  greatest 
men  of  action  that  the  world  has  ever  seen,  and 
who  in  the  ninth  century  ruled  over  all  Western 
Europe.  To  the  historic  Karl  corresponds  in 
many  particulars  the  mythical  Charlemagne. 
The  legend  has  preserved  the  fact,  which  with- 
out the  information  supplied  by  history  we  might 
perhaps  set  down  as  a  fiction,  that  there  was  a 
time  when  Germany,  Gaul,  Italy,  and  part  of 
Spain  formed  a  single  empire.  And,  as  Mr. 
Freeman  has  well  observed,  the  mythical  cru- 
sades of  Charlemagne  are  good  evidence  that 
there  were  crusades,  although  the  real  Karl  had 
nothing  whatever  to  do  with  one. 

Now  the  case  of  Agamemnon  may  be  much 
like  that  of  Charlemagne,  except  that  we  no 
longer  have  history  to  help  us  in  rectifying  the 
legend.  The  Iliad  preserves  the  tradition  of  a 
time  when  a  large  portion  of  the  islands  and 
mainland  of  Greece  were  at  least  partially  sub- 
ject to  a  common  suzerain ;  and,  as  Mr.  Freeman 
270 


JUVENTUS  MUNDI 

has  again  shrewdly  suggested,  the  assignment 
of  a  place  like  Mykenai,  instead  of  Athens  or 
Sparta  or  Argos,  as  the  seat  of  the  suzerainty, 
is  strong  evidence  of  the  trustworthiness  of  the 
tradition.  It  appears  to  show  that  the  legend  was 
constrained  by  some  remembered  fact,  instead 
of  being  guided  by  general  probability.  Charle- 
magne's seat  of  government  has  been  transferred 
in  romance  from  Aachen  to  Paris  ;  had  it  really 
been  at  Paris,  says  Mr.  Freeman,  no  one  would 
have  thought  of  transferring  it  to  Aachen. 
Moreover,  the  story  of  Agamemnon,  though 
uncontrolled  by  historic  records,  is  here  at  least 
supported  by  archaeologic  remains,  which  prove 
Mykenai  to  have  been  at  some  time  or  other  a 
place  of  great  consequence.  Then,  as  to  the 
Trojan  war,  we  know  that  the  Greeks  several 
times  crossed  the  ^gaean  and  colonized  a  large 
part  of  the  seacoast  of  Asia  Minor.  In  order 
to  do  this  it  was  necessary  to  oust  from  their 
homes  many  warlike  communities  of  Lydians 
and  Bithynians,  and  we  may  be  sure  that  this  was 
not  done  without  prolonged  fighting.  There 
may  very  probably  have  been  now  and  then  a 
levy  en  masse  in  prehistoric  Greece,  as  there  was 
in  mediaeval  Europe  ;  and  whether  the  great 
suzerain  at  Mykenai  ever  attended  one  or  not, 
legend  would  be  sure  to  send  him  on  such  an 
expedition,  as  it  afterwards  sent  Charlemagne 
on  a  crusade. 

271 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

It  is  therefore  quite  possible  that  Agamemnon 
and  Menelaos  may  represent  dimly  remembered 
sovereigns  or  heroes,  with  their  characters  and 
actions  distorted  to  suit  the  exigencies  of  a  nar- 
rative founded  upon  a  solar  myth.  The  char- 
acter of  the  Nibelungenlied  here  well  illustrates 
that  of  the  Iliad.  Siegfried  and  Brunhild,  Hagen 
and  Gunther,  seem  to  be  mere  personifications 
of  physical  phenomena  ;  but  Etzel  and  Dietrich 
are  none  other  than  Attila  and  Theodoric  sur- 
rounded with  mythical  attributes  ;  and  even  the 
conception  of  Brunhild  has  been  supposed  to 
contain  elements  derived  from  the  traditional  re- 
collection of  the  historical  Brunehault.  When, 
therefore,  Achilleus  is  said,  like  a  true  son-god, 
to  have  died  by  a  wound  from  a  sharp  instru- 
ment in  the  only  vulnerable  part  of  his  body, 
we  may  reply  that  the  legendary  Charlemagne 
conducts  himself  in  many  respects  like  a  solar 
deity.  If  Odysseus  detained  by  Kalypso  repre- 
sents the  sun  ensnared  and  held  captive  by  the 
pale  goddess  of  night,  the  legend  of  Frederic 
Barbarossa  asleep  in  a  Thuringian  mountain 
embodies  a  portion  of  a  kindred  conception. 
We  know  that  Charlemagne  and  Frederic  have 
been  substituted  for  Odin ;  we  may  suspect  that 
with  the  mythical  impersonations  of  Achilleus 
and  Odysseus  some  traditional  figures  may  be 
blended.  We  should  remember  that  in  early 
times  the  solar  myth  was  a  sort  of  type  after 
272 


JUVENTUS  MUNDI 

which  all  wonderful  stories  would  be  patterned, 
and  that  to  such  a  type  tradition  also  would  be 
made  to  conform. 

In  suggesting  this  view,  we  are  not  opening 
the  door  to  Euhemerism.  If  there  is  any  one 
conclusion  concerning  the  Homeric  poems  which 
the  labours  of  a  whole  generation  of  scholars 
may  be  said  to  have  satisfactorily  established, 
it  is  this,  that  no  trustworthy  history  can  be 
obtained  from  either  the  Iliad  or  the  Odyssey 
merely  by  sifting  out  the  mythical  element. 
Even  if  the  poems  contain  the  faint  reminis- 
cence of  an  actual  event,  that  event  is  inextri- 
cably wrapped  up  in  mythical  phraseology,  so 
that  by  no  cunning  of  the  scholar  can  it  be 
construed  into  history.  In  view  of  this  it  is 
quite  useless  for  Mr.  Gladstone  to  attempt  to 
base  historical  conclusions  upon  the  fact  that 
Helena  is  always  called  "  Argive  Helen,"  or  to 
draw  ethnological  inferences  from  the  circum- 
stances that  Menelaos,  Achilleus,  and  the  rest 
of  the  Greek  heroes,  have  yellow  hair,  while  the 
Trojans  are  never  so  described.  The  Argos  of 
the  myth  is  not  the  city  of  Peloponnesos,  though 
doubtless  so  construed  even  in  Homer's  time. 
It  is  "  the  bright  land  "  where  Zeus  resides,  and 
the  epithet  is  applied  to  his  wife  Here  and  his 
daughter  Helena,  as  well  as  to  the  dog  of  Odys- 
seus, who  reappears  with  Sarameyas  in  the  Veda. 
As  for  yellow  hair,  there  is  no  evidence  that 
273 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

Greeks  have  ever  commonly  possessed  it ;  but 
no  other  colour  would  do  for  a  solar  hero,  and 
it  accordingly  characterizes  the  entire  company 
of  them,  wherever  found,  while  for  the  Trojans, 
or  children  of  night,  it  is  not  required. 

A  wider  acquaintance  with  the  results  which 
have  been  obtained  during  the  past  thirty  years 
by  the  comparative  study  of  languages  and 
mythologies  would  have  led  Mr.  Gladstone  to 
reconsider  many  of  his  views  concerning  the 
Homeric  poems,  and  might  perhaps  have  led 
him  to  cut  out  half  or  two  thirds  of  his  book 
as  hopelessly  antiquated.  The  chapter  on  the 
divinities  of  Olympos  would  certainly  have  had 
to  be  rewritten,  and  the  ridiculous  theory  of  a 
primeval  revelation  abandoned.  One  can  hardly 
preserve  one's  gravity  when  Mr.  Gladstone  de- 
rives Apollo  from  the  Hebrew  Messiah,  and 
Athene  from  the  Logos.  To  accredit  Homer 
with  an  acquaintance  with  the  doctrine  of  the 
Logos,  which  did  not  exist  until  the  time  of 
Philo,  and  did  not  receive  its  authorized  Chris- 
tian form  until  the  middle  of  the  second  century 
after  Christ,  is  certainly  a  strange  proceeding. 
We  shall  next  perhaps  be  invited  to  believe  that 
the  authors  of  the  Volsunga  Saga  obtained  the 
conception  of  Sigurd  from  the  "Thirty-Nine 
Articles."  It  is  true  that  these  deities,  Athene 
and  Apollo,  are  wiser,  purer,  and  more  digni- 
fied, on  the  whole,  than  any  of  the  other  divini- 
274 


JUVENTUS  MUNDI 

ties  of  the  Homeric  Olympos.  They  alone,  as 
Mr.  Gladstone  truly  observes,  are  never  de- 
ceived or  frustrated.  For  all  Hellas,  Apollo 
was  the  interpreter  of  futurity,  and  in  the  maid 
Athene  we  have  perhaps  the  highest  conception 
of  deity  to  which  the  Greek  mind  had  attained 
in  the  early  times.  In  the  Veda,  Athene  is 
nothing  but  the  dawn  ;  but  in  the  Greek  my- 
thology, while  the  merely  sensuous  glories  of 
daybreak  are  assigned  to  Eos,  Athene  becomes 
the  impersonation  of  the  illuminating  and  know- 
ledge-giving light  of  the  sky.  As  the  dawn,  she 
is  daughter  of  Zeus,  the  sky,  and  in  mythic 
language  springs  from  his  forehead  ;  but,  accord- 
ing to  the  Greek  conception,  this  imagery  signi- 
fies that  she  shares,  more  than  any  other  deity, 
in  the  boundless  wisdom  of  Zeus.  The  know- 
ledge of  Apollo,  on  the  other  hand,  is  the  pecu- 
liar privilege  of  the  sun,  who,  from  his  lofty 
position,  sees  everything  that  takes  place  upon 
the  earth.  Even  the  secondary  divinity  Helios 
possesses  this  prerogative  to  a  certain  extent. 

Next  to  a  Hebrew,  Mr.  Gladstone  prefers  a 
Phoenician  ancestry  for  the  Greek  divinities. 
But  the  same  lack  of  acquaintance  with  the  old 
Aryan  mythology  vitiates  all  his  conclusions. 
No  doubt  the  Greek  mythology  is  in  some 
particulars  tinged  with  Phoenician  conceptions. 
Aphrodite  was  originally  a  purely  Greek  divinity, 
but  in  course  of  time  she  acquired  some  of  the 
275 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

attributes  of  the  Semitic  Astarte,  and  was  hardly 
improved  by  the  change.  Adonis  is  simply  a 
Semitic  divinity,  imported  into  Greece.  But  the 
same  cannot  be  proved  of  Poseidon  ; l  far  less  of 
Hermes,  who  is  identical  with  the  Vedic  Sara- 
meyas,  the  rising  wind,  the  son  of  Sarama  the 
dawn,  the  lying,  tricksome  wind-god,  who  in- 
vented music,  and  conducts  the  souls  of  dead 
men  to  the  house  of  Hades,  even  as  his  coun- 
terpart the  Norse  Odin  rushes  over  the  tree- 
tops  leading  the  host  of  the  departed.  When 
one  sees  Iris,  the  messenger  of  Zeus,  referred 
to  a  Hebrew  original,  because  of  Jehovah's 
promise  to  Noah,  one  is  at  a  loss  to  understand 
the  relationship  between  the  two  conceptions. 
Nothing  could  be  more  natural  to  the  Greeks 
than  to  call  the  rainbow  the  messenger  of  the 
sky-god  to  earth-dwelling  men  ;  to  call  it  a  token 
set  in  the  sky  by  Jevohah,  as  the  Hebrews  did, 
was  a  very  different  thing.  We  may  admit  the 

1  I  have  no  opinion  as  to  the  nationality  of  the  Earth- 
shaker,  and,  regarding  the  etymology  of  his  name,  I  believe 
we  can  hardly  do  better  than  acknowledge,  with  Mr.  Cox, 
that  it  is  unknown.  It  may  well  be  doubted,  however,  whether 
much  good  is  likely  to  come  of  comparisons  between  Posei- 
don, Dagon,  Oannes,  and  Noah,  or  of  distinctions  between 
the  children  of  Shem  and  the  children  of  Ham.  See  Brown's 
Poseidon;  a  Link  between  Semite,  Hamite,  and  Aryan, 
London,  1872,  —  a  book  which  is  open  to  several  of  the 
criticisms  here  directed  against  Mr.  Gladstone's  manner  of 
theorizing. 

276 


JUVENTUS  MUNDI 

very  close  resemblance  between  the  myth  of 
Bellerophon  and  Anteia,  and  that  of  Joseph  and 
Zuleikha ;  but  the  fact  that  the  Greek  story  is 
explicable  from  Aryan  antecedents,  while  the 
Hebrew  story  is  isolated,  might  perhaps  suggest 
the  inference  that  the  Hebrews  were  the  bor- 
rowers, as  they  undoubtedly  were  in  the  case  of 
the  myth  of  Eden.  Lastly,  to  conclude  that 
Helios  is  an  Eastern  deity,  because  he  reigns  in 
the  East  over  Thrinakia,  is  wholly  unwarranted. 
Is  not  Helios  pure  Greek  for  the  sun  ?  and  where 
should  his  sacred  island  be  placed,  if  not  in  the 
East?  As  for  his  oxen,  which  wrought  such 
dire  destruction  to  the  comrades  of  Odysseus, 
and  which  seem  to  Mr.  Gladstone  so  anoma- 
lous, they  are  those  very  same  unhappy  cattle, 
the  clouds,  which  were  stolen  by  the  storm- 
demon  Cacus  and  the  wind-deity  Hermes,  and 
which  furnished  endless  material  for  legends  to 
the  poets  of  the  Veda. 

But  the  whole  subject  of  comparative  my- 
thology seems  to  be  terra  incognita  to  Mr. 
Gladstone.  He  pursues  the  even  tenor  of  his 
way  in  utter  disregard  of  Grimm,  and  Kuhn, 
and  Breal,  and  Dasent,  and  Burnouf.  He  takes 
no  note  of  the  Rig- Veda,  nor  does  he  seem  to 
realize  that  there  was  ever  a  time  when  the  an- 
cestors of  the  Greeks  and  Hindus  worshipped 
the  same  gods.  Two  or  three  times  he  cites 
Max  Muller,  but  makes  no  use  of  the  copious 
277 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

data  which  might  be  gathered  from  him.  The 
only  work  which  seems  really  to  have  attracted 
his  attention  is  M.  Jacolliot's  very  discreditable 
performance  called  "  The  Bible  in  India."  Mr. 
Gladstone  does  not,  indeed,  unreservedly  ap- 
prove of  this  book  ;  but  neither  does  he  appear 
to  suspect  that  it  is  a  disgraceful  piece  of  char- 
latanry, written  by  a  man  ignorant  of  the  very 
rudiments  of  the  subject  which  he  professes  to 
handle. 

Mr.  Gladstone  is  equally  out  of  his  depth 
when  he  comes  to  treat  purely  philological  ques- 
tions. Of  the  science  of  philology,  as  based 
upon  established  laws  of  phonetic  change,  he 
seems  to  have  no  knowledge  whatever.  He 
seems  to  think  that  two  words  are  sufficiently 
proved  to  be  connected  when  they  are  seen  to 
resemble  each  other  in  spelling  or  in  sound. 
Thus  he  quotes  approvingly  a  derivation  of  the 
name  Themis  from  an  assumed  verb  them,  "  to 
speak,"  whereas  it  is  notoriously  derived  from 
Ti'077/u,  as  statute  comes  ultimately  from  stare. 
His  reference  of  hieros^  "  a  priest,"  and  geron, 
"  an  old  man,"  to  the  same  root,  is  utterly  base- 
less ;  the  one  is  the  Sanskrit  ishiras,  "  a  power- 
ful man,"  the  other  is  the  Sanskrit  jaran,  "  an 
old  man."  The  list  of  words  on  pages  96—100 
are  disfigured  by  many  such  errors ;  and,  indeed, 
the  whole  purpose  for  which  they  are  given 
shows  how  sadly  Mr.  Gladstone's  philology  is 
278 


JUVENTUS  MUNDI 

in  arrears.  The  theory  of  Niebuhr  —  that  the 
words  common  to  Greek  and  Latin,  mostly  de- 
scriptive of  peaceful  occupations,  are  Pelasgian 
—  was  serviceable  enough  in  its  day,  but  is  now 
rendered  wholly  antiquated  by  the  discovery 
that  such  words  are  Aryan,  in  the  widest  sense. 
The  Pelasgian  theory  works  very  smoothly  so 
long  as  we  only  compare  the  Greek  with  the 
Latin  words,  —  as,  for  instance,  £vyoz>  with  ju- 
gum ;  but  when  we  add  the  English  yoke  and 
the  Sanskrit  yugam,  it  is  evident  that  we  have 
got  far  out  of  the  range  of  the  Pelasgoi.  But 
what  shall  we  say  when  we  find  Mr.  Gladstone 
citing  the  Latin  thalamus  in  support  of  this  an- 
tiquated theory  ?  Doubtless  the  word  thalamus 
is,  or  should  be,  significative  of  peaceful  occu- 
pations ;  but  it  is  not  a  Latin  word  at  all,  except 
by  adoption.  One  might  as  well  cite  the  word 
ensemble  to  prove  the  original  identity  or  kin- 
ship between  English  and  French. 

When  Mr.  Gladstone,  leaving  the  danger- 
ous ground  of  pure  and  applied  philology,  con- 
fines himself  to  illustrating  the  contents  of  the 
Homeric  poems,  he  is  always  excellent.  His 
chapter  on  the  "  Outer  Geography  "  of  the 
Odyssey  is  exceedingly  interesting  ;  showing  as 
it  does  how  much  may  be  obtained  from  the 
patient  and  attentive  study  of  even  a  single 
author.  Mr.  Gladstone's  knowledge  of  the  sur- 
face of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey,  so  to  speak,  is 
279 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

extensive  and  accurate.  It  is  when  he  attempts 
to  penetrate  beneath  the  surface  and  survey  the 
treasures  hidden  in  the  bowels  of  the  earth,  that 
he  shows  himself  unprovided  with  the  talisman 
of  the  wise  dervise,  which  alone  can  unlock  those 
mysteries.  But  modern  philology  is  an  exact- 
ing science :  to  approach  its  higher  problems 
requires  an  amount  of  preparation  sufficient  to 
terrify  at  the  outset  all  but  the  boldest ;  and 
a  man  who  has  had  to  regulate  taxation,  and 
make  out  financial  statements,  and  lead  a  polit- 
ical party  in  a  great  nation,  may  well  be  excused 
for  ignorance  of  philology.  It  is  difficult  enough 
for  those  who  have  little  else  to  do  but  to  pore 
over  treatises  on  phonetics,  and  thumb  their 
lexicons,  to  keep  fully  abreast  with  the  latest 
views  in  linguistics.  In  matters  of  detail  one 
can  hardly  ever  broach  a  new  hypothesis  with- 
out misgivings  lest  somebody,  in  some  weekly 
journal  published  in  Germany,  may  just  have 
anticipated  and  refuted  it.  Yet  while  Mr.  Glad- 
stone may  be  excused  for  being  unsound  in 
philology,  it  is  far  less  excusable  that  he  should 
sit  down  to  write  a  book  about  Homer, 
abounding  in  philological  statements,  without 
the  slightest  knowledge  of  what  has  been 
achieved  in  that  science  for  several  years  past. 
In  spite  of  all  drawbacks,  however,  his  book 
shows  an  abiding  taste  for  scholarly  pursuits, 
and  therefore  deserves  a  certain  kind  of  praise. 
280 


JUVENTUS  MUNDI 

I  hope  —  though  just  now  the  idea  savours 
of  the  ludicrous  —  that  the  day  may  some  time 
arrive  when  our  Congressmen  and  Secretaries 
of  the  Treasury  will  spend  their  vacations  in 
writing  books  about  Greek  antiquities  or  in 
illustrating  the  meaning  of  Homeric  phrases. 

July,  1870. 


281 


VII 
THE   PRIMEVAL   GHOST-WORLD 

NO  earnest  student  of  human  culture  can 
as  yet  have  forgotten  or  wholly  out- 
lived the  feeling  of  delight  awakened 
by  the  first  perusal  of  Max  Miiller's  brilliant 
"  Essay  on  Comparative  Mythology,"  —  a 
work  in  which  the  scientific  principles  of  myth 
interpretation,  though  not  newly  announced, 
were  at  least  brought  home  to  the  reader  with 
such  an  amount  of  fresh  and  striking  concrete 
illustration  as  they  had  not  before  received. 
Yet  it  must  have  occurred  to  more  than  one 
reader  that,  while  the  analyses  of  myths  con- 
tained in  this  noble  essay  are  in  the  main  sound 
in  principle  and  correct  in  detail,  nevertheless 
the  author's  theory  of  the  genesis  of  myth  is 
expressed,  and  most  likely  conceived,  in  a  way 
that  is  very  suggestive  of  carelessness  and  fal- 
lacy. There  are  obvious  reasons  for  doubt- 
ing whether  the  existence  of  mythology  can  be 
due  to  any  "  disease,"  abnormity,  or  hyper- 
trophy of  metaphor  in  language ;  and  the  criti- 
cism at  once  arises,  that  with  the  myth-makers 
it  was  not  so  much  the  character  of  the  expres- 
282 


THE  PRIMEVAL  GHOST-WORLD 

sion  which  originated  the  thought,  as  it  was  the 
thought  which  gave  character  to  the  expression. 
It  is  not  that  the  early  Aryans  were  myth-makers 
because  their  language  abounded  in  metaphor  ; 
it  is  that  the  Aryan  mother-tongue  abounded 
in  metaphor  because  the  men  and  women  who 
spoke  it  were  myth-makers.  And  they  were 
myth-makers  because  they  had  nothing  but  the 
phenomena  of  human  will  and  effort  with  which 
to  compare  objective  phenomena.  Therefore  it 
was  that  they  spoke  of  the  sun  as  an  unwearied 
voyager  or  a  matchless  archer,  and  classified 
inanimate  no  less  than  animate  objects  as  mas- 
culine and  feminine.  Max  Muller's  way  of 
stating  his  theory,  both  in  this  Essay  and  in 
his  later  Lectures,  affords  one  among  several 
instances  of  the  curious  manner  in  which  he 
combines  a  marvellous  penetration  into  the 
significance  of  details  with  a  certain  looseness 
of  general  conception.1  The  principles  of  philo- 

1  «« The  expression  that  the  Erinys,  Saranyu,  the  Dawn, 
finds  out  the  criminal,  was  originally  quite  free  from  mytho- 
logy ;  /'/  meant  no  more  than  that  crime  would  be  brought  to 
light  some  day  or  other.  It  became  mythological,  however, 
as  soon  as  the  etymological  meaning  of  Erinys  was  forgotten, 
and  as  soon  as  the  Dawn,  a  portion  of  time,  assumed  the 
rank  of  a  personal  being."  Science  of  Language,  6th  edi- 
tion, ii.  615.  This  paragraph,  in  which  the  italicizing  is 
mine,  contains  Max  Muller's  theory  in  a  nutshell.  It  seems 
to  me  wholly  at  variance  with  the  facts  of  history.  The  facts 
concerning  primitive  culture  which  are  to  be  cited  in  this 
283 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

logical  interpretation  are  an  indispensable  aid 
to  us  in  detecting  the  hidden  meaning  of  many 
a  legend  in  which  the  powers  of  nature  are  re- 
presented in  the  guise  of  living  and  thinking 
persons  ;  but  before  we  can  get  at  the  secret  of 
the  myth-making  tendency  itself,  we  must  leave 
philology  and  enter  upon  a  psychological  study. 
We  must  inquire  into  the  characteristics  of  that 
primitive  style  of  thinking  to  which  it  seemed 
quite  natural  that  the  sun  should  be  an  un- 
erring archer,  and  the  thundercloud  a  black 
demon  or  gigantic  robber  finding  his  richly 
merited  doom  at  the  hands  of  the  indignant 
Lord  of  Light. 

Among  recent  treatises  which  have  dealt  with 
this  interesting  problem,  we  shall  find  it  advan- 
tageous to  give  especial  attention  to  Mr.  Tylor's 
"  Primitive  Culture," *  one  of  the  few  erudite 

paper  will  show  that  the  case  is  just  the  other  way.  Instead 
of  the  expression  "  Erinys  finds  the  criminal  "  being  originally 
a  metaphor,  it  was  originally  a  literal  statement  of  what  was 
believed  to  be  fact.  The  Dawn  (not  "a  portion  of  time," 
( !)  but  the  rosy  flush  of  the  morning  sky)  was  originally  re- 
garded as  a  real  person.  Primitive  men,  strictly  speaking,  do 
not  talk  in  metaphors  ;  they  believe  in  the  literal  truth  of 
their  similes  and  personifications,  from  which,  by  survival  in 
culture,  our  poetic  metaphors  are  lineally  descended.  Homer's 
allusion  to  a  rolling  stone  as  l(rcrvp.€vos,  or  "  yearning  "  (to 
keep  on  rolling),  is  to  us  a  mere  figurative  expression  ;  but 
to  the  savage  it  is  the  description  of  a  fact. 

1  Primitive  Culture:    Researches  into  the  Development 
284 


THE  PRIMEVAL  GHOST-WORLD 

works  which  are  at  once  truly  great  and  thor- 
oughly entertaining.  The  learning  displayed  in 
it  would  do  credit  to  a  German  specialist,  both 
for  extent  and  for  minuteness,  while  the  orderly 
arrangement  of  the  arguments  and  the  elegant 
lucidity  of  the  style  are  such  as  we  are  accus- 
tomed to  expect  from  French  essay-writers. 
And  what  is  still  more  admirable  is  the  way  in 
which  the  enthusiasm  characteristic  of  a  genial 
and  original  speculator  is  tempered  by  the  pa- 
tience and  caution  of  a  cool-headed  critic.  Pa- 
tience and  caution  are  nowhere  more  needed 
than  in  writers  who  deal  with  mythology  and 
with  primitive  religious  ideas ;  but  these  quali- 
ties are  too  seldom  found  in  combination  with 
the  speculative  boldness  which  is  required  when 
fresh  theories  are  to  be  framed  or  new  paths 
of  investigation  opened.  The  state  of  mind  in 
which  the  explaining  powers  of  a  favourite 
theory  are  fondly  contemplated  is,  to  some  ex- 
tent, antagonistic  to  the  state  of  mind  in  which 
facts  are  seen,  with  the  eye  of  impartial  criticism, 
in  all  their  obstinate  and  uncompromising  real- 
ity. To  be  able  to  preserve  the  balance  between 
the  two  opposing  tendencies  is  to  give  evidence 
of  the  most  consummate  scientific  training.  It  is 
from  the  want  of  such  a  balance  that  the  recent 
great  work  of  Mr.  Cox  is  at  times  so  unsatis- 

of  Mythology,  Philosophy,  Religion,  Art,  and  Custom. 
By  Edward  B.  Tylor.  2  vols.  8vo.  London.  1871. 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

factory.  It  may,  I  fear,  seem  ill-natured  to  say 
so,  but  the  eagerness  with  which  Mr.  Cox  way- 
lays every  available  illustration  of  the  physical 
theory  of  the  origin  of  myths  has  now  and  then 
the  curious  effect  of  weakening  the  reader's  con- 
viction of  the  soundness  of  the  theory.  For 
my  own  part,  though  by  no  means  inclined  to 
waver  in  adherence  to  a  doctrine  once  adopted 
on  good  grounds,  I  never  felt  so  much  like 
rebelling  against  the  mythologic  supremacy  of 
the  Sun  and  the  Dawn  as  when  reading  Mr. 
Cox's  volumes.  That  Mr.  Tylor,  while  defend- 
ing the  same  fundamental  theory,  awakens  no 
such  rebellious  feelings,  is  due  to  his  clear  per- 
ception and  realization  of  the  fact  that  it  is 
impossible  to  generalize  in  a  single  formula  such 
many-sided  correspondences  as  those  which 
primitive  poetry  and  philosophy  have  discerned 
between  the  life  of  man  and  the  life  of  outward 
nature.  Whoso  goes  roaming  up  and  down  the 
elfland  of  popular  fancies,  with  sole  intent  to 
resolve  each  episode  of  myth  into  some  answer- 
ing physical  event,  his  only  criterion  being  out- 
ward resemblance,  cannot  be  trusted  in  his  con- 
clusions, since  wherever  he  turns  for  evidence 
he  is  sure  to  find  something  that  can  be  made 
to  serve  as  such.  As  Mr.  Tylor  observes,  no 
household  legend  or  nursery  rhyme  is  safe  from 
his  hermeneutics.  "  Should  he,  for  instance, 
demand  as  his  property  the  nursery  *  Song  of 
286 


THE  PRIMEVAL  GHOST-WORLD 

Sixpence,'  his  claim  would  be  easily  established, 
• —  obviously  the  four-and-twenty  blackbirds  are 
the  four-and-twenty  hours,  and  the  pie  that 
holds  them  is  the  underlying  earth  covered  with 
the  overarching  sky,  —  how  true  a  touch  of 
nature  it  is  that  when  the  pie  is  opened,  that  is, 
when  day  breaks,  the  birds  begin  to  sing ;  the 
King  is  the  Sun,  and  his  counting  out  his  money 
is  pouring  out  the  sunshine,  the  golden  shower 
of  Danae ;  the  Queen  is  the  Moon,  and  her 
transparent  honey  the  moonlight ;  the  Maid  is 
the  *  rosy-fingered '  Dawn,  who  rises  before  the 
Sun,  her  master,  and  hangs  out  the  clouds,  his 
clothes,  across  the  sky  ;  the  particular  black- 
bird, who  so  tragically  ends  the  tale  by  snipping 
off  her  nose,  is  the  hour  of  sunrise."  In  all  this 
interpretation  there  is  no  a  priori  improbability, 
save,  perhaps,  in  its  unbroken  symmetry  and 
completeness.  That  some  points,  at  least,  of 
the  story  are  thus  derived  from  antique  inter- 
pretations of  physical  events,  is  in  harmony 
with  all  that  we  know  concerning  nursery 
rhymes.  In  short,  "the  time-honoured  rhyme 
really  wants  but  one  thing  to  prove  it  a  sun 
myth,  that  one  thing  being  a  proof  by  some 
argument  more  valid  than  analogy."  The  char- 
acter of  the  argument  which  is  lacking  may  be 
illustrated  by  a  reference  to  the  rhyme  about 
Jack  and  Jill,  explained  some  time  since  in  the 
paper  on  "  The  Origins  of  Folk-Lore."  If  the 
287 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

argument  be  thought  valid  which  shows  these 
ill-fated  children  to  be  the  spots  on  the  moon, 
it  is  because  the  proof  consists,  not  in  the  ana- 
logy, which  is  in  this  case  not  especially  obvious, 
but  in  the  fact  that  in  the  Edda,  and  among 
ignorant  Swedish  peasants  of  our  own  day,  the 
story  of  Jack  and  Jill  is  actually  given  as  an 
explanation  of  the  moon-spots.  To  the  neglect 
of  this  distinction  between  what  is  plausible  and 
what  is  supported  by  direct  evidence,  is  due 
much  of  the  crude  speculation  which  encum- 
bers the  study  of  myths. 

It  is  when  Mr.  Tylor  merges  the  study  of 
mythology  into  the  wider  inquiry  into  the  char- 
acteristic features  of  the  mode  of  thinking  in 
which  myths  originated,  that  we  can  best  ap- 
preciate the  practical  value  of  that  union  of 
speculative  boldness  and  critical  sobriety  which 
everywhere  distinguishes  him.  It  is  pleasant  to 
meet  with  a  writer  who  can  treat  of  primitive 
religious  ideas  without  losing  his  head  over  al- 
legory and  symbolism,  and  who  duly  realizes 
the  fact  that  a  savage  is  not  a  rabbinical  com- 
mentator, or  a  cabalist,  or  a  Rosicrucian,  but  a 
plain  man  who  draws  conclusions  like  ourselves, 
though  with  feeble  intelligence  and  scanty  know- 
ledge. The  mystic  allegory  with  which  such 
modern  writers  as  Lord  Bacon  have  invested 
the  myths  of  antiquity  is  no  part  of  their  ori- 
ginal clothing,  but  is  rather  the  late  product  of 
288 


THE  PRIMEVAL  GHOST-WORLD 

a  style  of  reasoning  from  analogy  quite  similar 
to  that  which  we  shall  perceive  to  have  guided 
the  myth-makers  in  their  primitive  constructions. 
The  myths  and  customs  and  beliefs  which,  in 
an  advanced  stage  of  culture,  seem  meaning- 
less save  when  characterized  by  some  quaintly 
wrought  device  of  symbolic  explanation,  did 
not  seem  meaningless  in  the  lower  culture  which 
gave  birth  to  them.  Myths,  like  words,  survive 
their  primitive  meanings.  In  the  early  stage  the 
myth  is  part  and  parcel  of  the  current  mode  of 
philosophizing ;  the  explanation  which  it  offers 
is,  for  the  time,  the  natural  one,  the  one  which 
would  most  readily  occur  to  any  one  thinking 
on  the  theme  with  which  the  myth  is  concerned. 
But  by  and  by  the  mode  of  philosophizing  has 
changed  ;  explanations  which  formerly  seemed 
quite  obvious  no  longer  occur  to  any  one,  but 
the  myth  has  acquired  an  independent  substan- 
tive existence,  and  continues  to  be  handed  down 
from  parents  to  children  as  something  true, 
though  no  one  can  tell  why  it  is  true.  Lastly, 
the  myth  itself  gradually  fades  from  remem- 
brance, often  leaving  behind  it  some  utterly 
unintelligible  custom  or  seemingly  absurd  su- 
perstitious notion.  For  example,  —  to  recur  to 
an  illustration  already  cited  in  a  previous  pa- 
per,—  it  is  still  believed  here  and  there  by 
some  venerable  granny  that  it  is  wicked  to  kill 
robins  ;  but  he  who  should  attribute  the  belief 
289 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

to  the  old  granny's  refined  sympathy  with  all 
sentient  existence  would  be  making  one  of  the 
blunders  which  are  always  committed  by  those 
who  reason  a  -priori  about  historical  matters 
without  following  the  historical  method.  At  an 
earlier  date  the  superstition  existed  in  the  shape 
of  a  belief  that  the  killing  of  a  robin  portends 
some  calamity ;  in  a  still  earlier  form  the  calam- 
ity is  specified  as  death  ;  and  again,  still  earlier, 
as  death  by  lightning.  Another  step  backward 
reveals  that  the  dread  sanctity  of  the  robin  is 
owing  to  the  fact  that  he  is  the  bird  of  Thor, 
the  lightning  god ;  and  finally  we  reach  that 
primitive  stage  of  philosophizing  in  which  the 
lightning  is  explained  as  a  red  bird  dropping 
from  its  beak  a  worm  which  cleaveth  the  rocks. 
Again,  the  belief  that  some  harm  is  sure  to 
come  to  him  who  saves  the  life  of  a  drowning 
man  is  unintelligible  until  it  is  regarded  as  a 
case  of  survival  in  culture.  In  the  older  form  of 
the  superstition  it  is  held  that  the  rescuer  will 
sooner  or  later  be  drowned  himself;  and  thus 
we  pass  to  the  fetichistic  interpretation  of  drown- 
ing as  the  seizing  of  the  unfortunate  person  by 
the  water-spirit  or  nixy,  who  is  naturally  angry 
at  being  deprived  of  his  victim,  and  henceforth 
bears  a  special  grudge  against  the  bold  mortal 
who  has  thus  dared  to  frustrate  him. 

The  interpretation  of  the  lightning  as  a  red 
bird,  and  of  drowning  as  the  work  of  a  smiling 
290 


THE  PRIMEVAL  GHOST-WORLD 

but  treacherous  fiend,  are  parts  of  that  primi- 
tive philosophy  of  nature  in  which  all  forces  ob- 
jectively existing  are  conceived  as  identical  with 
the  force  subjectively  known  as  volition.  It  is 
this  philosophy,  currently  known  as  fetichism, 
but  treated  by  Mr.  Tylor  under  the  somewhat 
more  comprehensive  name  of  "  animism,"  which 
we  must  now  consider  in  a  few  of  its  most  con- 
spicuous exemplifications.  When  we  have  pro- 
perly characterized  some  of  the  processes  which 
the  untrained  mind  habitually  goes  through,  we 
shall  have  incidentally  arrived  at  a  fair  solution 
of  the  genesis  of  mythology. 

Let  us  first  note  the  ease  with  which  the  bar- 
baric or  uncultivated  mind  reaches  all  manner 
of  apparently  fanciful  conclusions  through  reck- 
less reasoning  from  analogy.  It  is  through  the 
operation  of  certain  laws  of  ideal  association  that 
all  human  thinking,  that  of  the  highest  as  well 
as  that  of  the  lowest  minds,  is  conducted :  the 
discovery  of  the  law  of  gravitation,  as  well  as 
the  invention  of  such  a  superstition  as  the  Hand 
of  Glory,  is  at  bottom  but  a  case  of  association 
of  ideas.  The  difference  between  the  scientific 
and  the  mythologic  inference  consists  solely  in 
the  number  of  checks  which  in  the  former  case 
combine  to  prevent  any  other  than  the  true 
conclusion  from  being  framed  into  a  proposi- 
tion to  which  the  mind  assents.  Countless  ac- 
cumulated experiences  have  taught  the  modern 
291 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

that  there  are  many  associations  of  ideas  which 
do  not  correspond  to  any  actual  connection  of 
cause  and  effect  in  the  world  of  phenomena; 
and  he  has  learned  accordingly  to  apply  to  his 
newly  framed  notions  the  rigid  test  of  verifica- 
tion. Besides  which  the  same  accumulation  of 
experiences  has  built  up  an  organized  structure 
of  ideal  associations  into  which  only  the  less 
extravagant  newly  framed  notions  have  any 
chance  of  fitting.  The  primitive  man,  or  the 
modern  savage  who  is  to  some  extent  his  coun- 
terpart, must  reason  without  the  aid  of  these 
multifarious  checks.  That  immense  mass  of 
associations  which  answer  to  what  are  called 
physical  laws,  and  which  in  the  mind  of  the  civ- 
ilized modern  have  become  almost  organic,  have 
not  been  formed  in  the  mind  of  the  savage  ;  nor 
has  he  learned  the  necessity  of  experimentally 
testing  any  of  his  newly  framed  notions,  save 
perhaps  a  few  of  the  commonest.  Consequently 
there  is  nothing  but  superficial  analogy  to  guide 
the  course  of  his  thought  hither  or  thither,  and 
the  conclusions  at  which  he  arrives  will  be  de- 
termined by  associations  of  ideas  occurring  ap- 
parently at  haphazard.  Hence  the  quaint  or 
grotesque  fancies  with  which  European  and  bar- 
baric folk-lore  is  filled,  in  the  framing  of  which 
the  myth-maker  was  but  reasoning  according  to 
the  best  methods  at  his  command.  To  this  sim- 
plest class,  in  which  the  association  of  ideas  is 
292 


THE  PRIMEVAL  GHOST-WORLD 

determined  by  mere  analogy,  belong  such  cases 
as  that  of  the  Zulu,  who  chews  a  piece  of  wood 
in  order  to  soften  the  heart  of  the  man  with 
whom  he  is  about  to  trade  for  cows,  or  the  Hes- 
sian lad  who  "  thinks  he  may  escape  the  con- 
scription by  carrying  a  baby-girl's  cap  in  his 
pocket,  —  a  symbolic  way  of  repudiating  man- 
hood." l  A  similar  style  of  thinking  underlies 
the  mediaeval  necromancer's  practice  of  making 
a  waxen  image  of  his  enemy  and  shooting  at  it 
with  arrows,  in  order  to  bring  about  the  enemy's 
death ;  as  also  the  case  of  the  magic  rod,  men- 
tioned in  a  previous  paper,  by  means  of  which 
a  sound  thrashing  can  be  administered  to  an 
absent  foe  through  the  medium  of  an  old  coat 
which  is  imagined  to  cover  him.  The  principle 
involved  here  is  one  which  is  doubtless  famil- 
iar to  most  children,  and  is  closely  akin  to  that 
which  Irving  so  amusingly  illustrates  in  his 
doughty  general  who  struts  through  a  field  of 
cabbages  or  corn-stalks,  smiting  them  to  earth 
with  his  cane,  and  imagining  himself  a  hero 
of  chivalry  conquering  single-handed  a  host  of 
caitiff  ruffians.  Of  like  origin  are  the  fancies 
that  the  breaking  of  a  mirror  heralds  a  death  in 
the  family,  —  probably  because  of  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  reflected  human  image ;  that  the 
"  hair  of  the  dog  that  bit  you  "  will  prevent 
hydrophobia  if  laid  upon  the  wound ;  or  that 

1  Tylor,  op.  fit.  i.  107. 
293 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

the  tears  shed  by  human  victims,  sacrificed  to 
mother  earth,  will  bring  down  showers  upon 
the  land.  Mr.  Tylor  cites  Lord  Chesterfield's 
remark  "  that  the  king  had  been  ill,  and  that 
people  generally  expected  the  illness  to  be  fatal, 
because  the  oldest  lion  in  the  Tower,  about  the 
king's  age,  had  just  died.  l  So  wild  and  capri- 
cious is  the  human  mind,' "  observes  the  ele- 
gant letter-writer.  But  indeed,  as  Mr.  Tylor 
justly  remarks,  "  the  thought  was  neither  wild 
nor  capricious  ;  it  was  simply  such  an  argu- 
ment from  analogy  as  the  educated  world  has 
at  length  painfully  learned  to  be  worthless,  but 
which,  it  is  not  too  much  to  declare,  would  to 
this  day  carry  considerable  weight  to  the  minds 
of  four  fifths  of  the  human  race."  Upon  such 
symbolism  are  based  most  of  the  practices  of 
divination  and  the  great  pseudo-science  of  as- 
trology. "It  is  an  old  story,  that  when  two 
brothers  were  once  taken  ill  together,  Hippo- 
krates,  the  physician,  concluded  from  the  coin- 
cidence that  they  were  twins,  but  Poseidonios, 
the  astrologer,  considered  rather  that  they  were 
born  under  the  same  constellation  ;  we  may  add 
that  either  argument  would  be  thought  reason- 
able by  a  savage."  So  when  a  Maori  fortress  is 
attacked,  the  besiegers  and  besieged  look  to  see 
if  Venus  is  near  the  moon.  The  moon  repre- 
sents the  fortress ;  and  if  it  appears  below  the 
companion  planet,  the  besiegers  will  carry  the 
294 


THE  PRIMEVAL  GHOST-WORLD 

day,  otherwise  they  will  be  repulsed.  Equally 
primitive  and  childlike  was  Rousseau's  train 
of  thought  on  the  memorable  day  at  Les  Char- 
mettes  when,  being  distressed  with  doubts  as  to 
the  safety  of  his  soul,  he  sought  to  determine 
the  point  by  throwing  a  stone  at  a  tree.  "  Hit, 
sign  of  salvation;  miss,  sign  of  damnation  !" 
The  tree  being  a  large  one  and  very  near  at 
hand,  the  result  of  the  experiment  was  reassur- 
ing, and  the  young  philosopher  walked  away 
without  further  misgivings  concerning  this  mo- 
mentous question.1 

When  the  savage,  whose  highest  intellectual 
efforts  result  only  in  speculations  of  this  child- 
like character,  is  confronted  with  the  phenomena 
of  dreams,  it  is  easy  to  see  what  he  will  make 
of  them.  His  practical  knowledge  of  psychology 
is  too  limited  to  admit  of  his  distinguishing 
between  the  solidity  of  waking  experience  and 
what  we  may  call  the  unsubstantialness  of  the 
dream.  He  may,  indeed,  have  learned  that  the 
dream  is  not  to  be  relied  on  for  telling  the 
truth  ;  the  Zulu,  for  example,  has  even  reached 
the  perverse  triumph  of  critical  logic  achieved 
by  our  own  Aryan  ancestors  in  the  saying  that 
"  dreams  go  by  contraries."  But  the  Zulu  has 
not  learned,  nor  had  the  primeval  Aryan  learned, 

1  Rousseau,  Confessions,  i.  vi.  For  further  illustration, 
see  especially  the  note  on  the  "  doctrine  of  signatures," 
lufra,  p.  75. 

295 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

to  disregard  the  utterances  of  the  dream  as 
being  purely  subjective  phenomena.  To  the 
mind  as  yet  untouched  by  modern  culture,  the 
visions  seen  and  the  voices  heard  in  sleep  pos- 
sess as  much  objective  reality  as  the  gestures 
and  shouts  of  waking  hours.  When  the  sav- 
age relates  his  dream,  he  tells  how  he  saw  cer- 
tain dogs,  dead  warriors,  or  demons  last  night, 
the  implication  being  that  the  things  seen  were 
objects  external  to  himself.  As  Mr.  Spencer 
observes,  "  his  rude  language  fails  to  state  the 
difference  between  seeing  and  dreaming  that  he 
saw,  doing  and  dreaming  that  he  did.  From 
this  inadequacy  of  his  language  it  not  only  re- 
sults that  he  cannot  truly  represent  this  differ- 
ence to  others,  but  also  that  he  cannot  truly 
represent  it  to  himself.  Hence  in  the  absence 
of  an  alternative  interpretation,  his  belief,  and 
that  of  those  to  whom  he  tells  his  adventures, 
is  that  his  other  self  has  been  away  and  came 
back  when  he  awoke.  And  this  belief,  which 
we  find  among  various  existing  savage  tribes, 
we  equally  find  in  the  traditions  of  the  early 
civilized  races."1 

Let  us  consider,  for  a  moment,  this  assump- 
tion of  the  other  self,  for  upon  this  is  based  the 
great  mass  of  crude  inference  which  constitutes 
the  primitive  man's  philosophy  of  nature.  The 

1  Spencer,  Recent   Discussions  in   Science,   etc.,  p.    36, 
"  The  Origin  of  Animal  Worship." 
296 


THE  PRIMEVAL  GHOST-WORLD 

hypothesis  of  the  other  self,  which  serves  to  ac- 
count for  the  savage's  wanderings  during  sleep 
in  strange  lands  and  among  strange  people, 
serves  also  to  account  for  the  presence  in  his 
dreams  of  parents,  comrades,  or  enemies,  known 
to  be  dead  and  buried.  The  other  self  of  the 
dreamer  meets  and  converses  with  the  other 
selves  of  his  dead  brethren,  joins  with  them  in 
the  hunt,  or  sits  down  with  them  to  the  wild 
cannibal  banquet.  Thus  arises  the  belief  in  an 
ever-present  world  of  souls  or  ghosts,  a  belief 
which  the  entire  experience  of  uncivilized  man 
goes  to  strengthen  and  expand.  The  existence 
of  some  tribe  or  tribes  of  savages  wholly  desti- 
tute of  religious  belief  has  often  been  hastily 
asserted  and  as  often  called  in  question.  But 
there  is  no  question  that,  while  many  savages 
are  unable  to  frame  a  conception  so  general  as 
that  of  godhood,  on  the  other  hand  no  tribe 
has  ever  been  found  so  low  in  the  scale  of  in- 
telligence as  not  to  have  framed  the  concep- 
tion of  ghosts  or  spiritual  personalities,  capable 
of  being  angered,  propitiated,  or  conjured  with. 
Indeed  it  is  not  improbable  a  priori  that  the 
original  inference  involved  in  the  notion  of  the 
other  self  may  be  sufficiently  simple  and  ob- 
vious to  fall  within  the  capacity  of  animals  even 
less  intelligent  than  uncivilized  man.  An  au- 
thentic case  is  on  record  of  a  Skye  terrier  who, 
being  accustomed  to  obtain  favours  from  his 
297 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

master  by  sitting  on  his  haunches,  will  also  sit 
before  his  pet  india-rubber  ball  placed  on  the 
chimney-piece,  evidently  beseeching  it  to  jump 
down  and  play  with  him.1  Such  a  fact  as  this 
is  quite  in  harmony  with  Auguste  Comte's  sug- 
gestion that  such  intelligent  animals  as  dogs, 
apes,  and  elephants  may  be  capable  of  forming 
a  few  fetichistic  notions.  The  behaviour  of  the 
terrier  here  rests  upon  the  assumption  that  the 
ball  is  open  to  the  same  sort  of  entreaty  which 
prevails  with  the  master ;  which  implies,  not 
that  the  wistful  brute  accredits  the  ball  with  a 
soul,  but  that  in  his  mind  the  distinction  be- 
tween life  and  inanimate  existence  has  never 
been  thoroughly  established.  Just  this  confu- 
sion between  things  living  and  things  not  living 
is  present  throughout  the  whole  philosophy  of 
fetichism ;  and  the  confusion  between  things 
seen  and  things  dreamed,  which  suggests  the 
notion  of  another  self,  belongs  to  this  same 
twilight  stage  of  intelligence  in  which  primeval 
man  has  not  yet  clearly  demonstrated  his  im- 
measurable superiority  to  the  brutes.2 

1  See  Nature,  vol.  vi.  p.  262,  August  i,   1872.     The 
circumstances  narrated  are  such  as  to  exclude  the  supposition 
that  the  sitting  up  is  intended  to  attract  the  master's  attention. 
The  dog  has  frequently  been  seen  trying  to  soften  the  heart 
of  the  ball,  while  observed  unawares  by  his  master. 

2  "  We  would,  however,  commend  to  Mr.  Fiske's  atten- 
tion Mr.  Mark  Twain's  dog,  who   '  could  n't  be  depended 
on  for  a  special  providence,'  as  being  nearer  to  the  actual  dog 

298 


THE  PRIMEVAL  GHOST-WORLD 

The  conception  of  a  soul  or  other  self,  capa- 
ble of  going  away  from  the  body  and  returning 

of  every -day  life  than  is  the  Skye  terrier  mentioned  by  a 
certain  correspondent  of  Nature,  to  whose  letter  Mr.  Fiske 
refers.  The  terrier  is  held  to  have  had  « a  few  fetichistic 
notions,'  because  he  was  found  standing  upon  his  hind  legs  in 
front  of  a  mantel-piece,  upon  which  lay  an  india-rubber  ball 
with  which  he  wished  to  play,  but  which  he  could  not  reach, 
and  which,  says  the  letter-writer,  he  was  evidently  beseech- 
ing to  come  down  and  play  with  him.  We  consider  it  more 
reasonable  to  suppose  that  a  dog  who  had  been  drilled  into  a 
belief  that  standing  upon  his  hind  legs  was  very  pleasing  to 
his  master,  and  who,  therefore,  had  accustomed  himself  to 
stand  on  his  hind  legs  whenever  he  desired  anything,  and 
whose  usual  way  of  getting  what  he  desired  was  to  induce 
somebody  to  get  it  for  him,  may  have  stood  up  in  front  of  the 
mantel-piece  rather  from  force  of  habit  and  eagerness  of  de- 
sire than  because  he  had  any  fetichistic  notions,  or  expected 
the  india-rubber  ball  to  listen  to  his  supplications.  We  admit, 
however,  to  avoid  polemical  controversy,  that  in  matter  of 
religion  the  dog  is  capable  of  anything."  The  Nation,  vol. 
xv.  p.  284,  October  i,  1872.  To  be  sure,  I  do  not  know 
for  certain  what  was  going  on  in  the  dog's  mind  ;  and  so, 
letting  both  explanations  stand,  I  will  only  add  another  fact 
of  similar  import.  "  The  tendency  in  savages  to  imagine 
that  natural  objects  and  agencies  are  animated  by  spiritual  or 
living  essences  is  perhaps  illustrated  by  a  little  fact  which  I 
once  noticed  :  my  dog,  a  full-grown  and  very  sensible  animal, 
was  lying  on  the  lawn  during  a  hot  and  still  day  ;  but  at  a 
little  distance  a  slight  breeze  occasionally  moved  an  open  par- 
asol, which  would  have  been  wholly  disregarded  by  the  dog 
had  any  one  stood  near  it.  As  it  was,  every  time  that  the 
parasol  slightly  moved,  the  dog  growled  fiercely  and  barked. 
He  must,  I  think,  have  reasoned  to  himself,  in  a  rapid  and 
299 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

to  it,  receives  decisive  confirmation  from  the 
phenomena  of  fainting,  trance,  catalepsy,  and 
ecstasy,1  which  occur  less  rarely  among  savages, 
owing  to  their  irregular  mode  of  life,  than 
among  civilized  men.  "  Further  verification," 
observes  Mr.  Spencer,  "  is  afforded  by  every 
epileptic  subject,  into  whose  body,  during  the 
absence  of  the  other  self,  some  enemy  has  en- 
tered; for  how  else  does  it  happen  that  the 
other  self  on  returning  denies  all  knowledge 
of  what  his  body  has  been  doing  ?  And  this 
supposition,  that  the  body  has  been  { possessed ' 
by  some  other  being,  is  confirmed  by  the  phe- 

unconscious  manner,  that  movement  without  any  apparent 
cause  indicated  the  presence  of  some  strange  living  agent,  and 
no  stranger  had  a  right  to  be  on  his  territory."  Darwin, 
Descent  of  Man,  vol.  i.  p.  64.  Without  insisting  upon  all 
the  details  of  this  explanation,  one  may  readily  grant,  I  think, 
that  in  the  dog,  as  in  the  savage,  there  is  an  undisturbed  as- 
sociation between  motion  and  a  living  motor  agency  ;  and  that 
out  of  a  multitude  of  just  such  associations  common  to  both, 
the  savage,  with  his  greater  generalizing  power,  frames  a 
truly  fetichistic  conception. 

1  Note  the  fedchism  wrapped  up  in  the  etymologies  of 
these  Greek  words.  Catalepsy,  KaraX^is,  a  seizing  of  the 
body  by  some  spirit  or  demon,  who  holds  it  rigid.  Ecstasy, 
cKorcuris,  a  displacement  or  removal  of  the  soul  from  the 
body,  into  which  the  demon  enters  and  causes  strange  laugh- 
ing, crying,  or  contortions.  It  is  not  metaphor,  but  the 
literal  belief  in  a  ghost-world,  which  has  given  rise  to  such 
words  as  these,  and  to  such  expressions  as  "a  man  beside 
himself  or  transported. ' ' 

300 


THE  PRIMEVAL  GHOST-WORLD 

nomena  of  somnambulism  and  insanity."  Still 
further,  as  Mr.  Spencer  points  out,  when  we 
recollect  that  savages  are  very  generally  unwill- 
ing to  have  their  portraits  taken,  lest  a  portion 
of  themselves  should  get  carried  off  and  be  ex- 
posed to  foul  play,1  we  must  readily  admit  that 

1  Something  akin  to  the  savage's  belief  in  the  animation 
of  pictures  may  be  seen  in  young  children.  I  have  often  been 
asked  by  my  three-year-old  boy,  whether  the  dog  in  a  certain 
picture  would  bite  him  if  he  were  to  go  near  it ;  and  I  can 
remember  that,  in  my  own  childhood,  when  reading  a  book 
about  insects,  which  had  the  formidable  likeness  of  a  spider 
stamped  on  the  centre  of  the  cover,  I  was  always  uneasy  lest 
my  finger  should  come  in  contact  with  the  dreaded  thing  as 
I  held  the  book. 

With  the  savage's  unwillingness  to  have  his  portrait  taken, 
lest  it  fall  into  the  hands  of  some  enemy  who  may  injure 
him  by  conjuring  with  it,  may  be  compared  the  reluctance 
which  he  often  shows  toward  telling  his  name,  or  mentioning 
the  name  of  his  friend,  or  king,  or  tutelar  ghost-deity.  In 
fetichistic  thought,  the  name  is  an  entity  mysteriously  associ- 
ated with  its  owner,  and  it  is  not  well  to  run  the  risk  of  its 
getting  into  hostile  hands.  Along  with  this  caution  goes  the 
similarly  originated  fear  that  the  person  whose  name  is  spoken 
may  resent  such  meddling  with  his  personality.  For  the  latter 
reason  the  Dayak  will  not  allude  by  name  to  the  small-pox,  but 
will  call  it  "  the  chief"  or  <« jungle-leaves  ;  "  the  Laplander 
speaks  of  the  bear  as  the  "  old  man  with  the  fur  coat ;  "  in  An- 
nam  the  tiger  is  called  "  grandfather  "  or  "  Lord  ;  "  while  in 
more  civilized  communities  such  sayings  are  current  as  "  talk  of 
the  Devil,  and  he  will  appear,"  with  which  we  may  also  com- 
pare such  expressions  as  "  Eumenides  "  or  "  gracious  ones  " 
for  the  Furies,  and  other  like  euphemisms.  Indeed,  the 
3OI 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

the  weird  reflection  of  the  person  and  imitation 
of  the  gestures  in  rivers  or  still  woodland  pools 
will  go  far  to  intensify  the  belief  in  the  other 
self.  Less  frequent  but  uniform  confirmation 
is  to  be  found  in  echoes,  which  in  Europe 
within  two  centuries  have  been  commonly  in- 

maxim  nil  mortuis  nisi  bonum  had  most  likely  at  one  rime  a 
fetichistic  flavour. 

In  various  islands  of  the  Pacific,  for  both  the  reasons  above 
specified,  the  name  of  the  reigning  chief  is  so  rigorously 
"tabu,"  that  common  words  and  even  syllables  resembling 
that  name  in  sound  must  be  omitted  from  the  language. 
In  New  Zealand,  where  a  chief's  name  was  Maripi,  or 
"knife,"  it  became  necessary  to  call  knives  nekra  ;  and  in 
Tahiti,  fetu,  "  star,"  had  to  be  changed  \r\tofetia,  and  tut, 
"  to  strike,"  became  tiai,  etc.,  because  the  king's  name  was 
Tu.  Curious  freaks  are  played  with  the  languages  of  these 
islands  by  this  ever-recurring  necessity.  Among  the  Kafirs 
the  women  have  come  to  speak  a  different  dialect  from  the 
men,  because  words  resembling  the  names  of  their  lords  or 
male  relatives  are  in  like  manner  "  tabu."  The  student  of  hu- 
man culture  will  trace  among  such  primeval  notions  the  origin 
of  the  Jew's  unwillingness  to  pronounce  the  name  of  Jehovah  ; 
and  hence  we  may  perhaps  have  before  us  the  ultimate  source 
of  the  horror  with  which  the  Hebraizing  Puritan  regards  such 
forms  of  light  swearing — "  Mon  Dieu,"  etc. —  as  are 
still  tolerated  on  the  continent  of  Europe,  but  have  disap- 
peared from  good  society  in  Puritanic  England  and  America. 
The  reader  interested  in  this  group  of  ideas  and  customs  may 
consult  Tylor,  Early  History  of  Mankind,  pp.  142,  363  ; 
Max  Miiller,  Science  of  Language,  6th  edition,  vol.  ii.  p. 
37  ;  Mackay,  Religious  Development  of  the  Greeks  and 
Hebrews,  vol.  i.  p.  146. 

302 


THE  PRIMEVAL  GHOST-WORLD 

terpreted  as  the  voices  of  mocking  fiends  or 
wood-nymphs,  and  which  the  savage  might  well 
regard  as  the  utterances  of  his  other  self. 

Chamisso's  well-known  tale  of  Peter  Schle- 
mihl  belongs  to  a  widely  diffused  family  of- 
legends,  which  show  that  a  man's  shadow  has 
been  generally  regarded  not  only  as  an  entity, 
but  as  a  sort  of  spiritual  attendant  of  the  body, 
which  under  certain  circumstances  it  may  per- 
manently forsake.  It  is  in  strict  accordance  with 
this  idea  that  not  only  in  the  classic  languages, 
but  in  various  barbaric  tongues,  the  word  for 
"  shadow  "  expresses  also  the  soul  or  other  self. 
Tasmanians,  Algonquins,  Central  -  Americans, 
Abipones,  Basutos,  and  Zulus  are  cited  by  Mr. 
Tylor  as  thus  implicitly  asserting  the  identity 
of  the  shadow  with  the  ghost  or  phantasm  seen 
in  dreams  ;  the  Basutos  going  so  far  as  to 
think  "  that  if  a  man  walks  on  the  river-bank,  a 
crocodile  may  seize  his  shadow  in  the  water  and 
draw  him  in."  Among  the  Algonquins  a  sick 
person  is  supposed  to  have  his  shadow  or  other 
self  temporarily  detached  from  his  body,  and 
the  convalescent  is  at  times  "  reproached  for 
exposing  himself  before  his  shadow  was  safely 
settled  down  in  him."  If  the  sick  man  has  been 
plunged  into  stupor,  it  is  because  his  other  self 
has  travelled  away  as  far  as  the  brink  of  the 
river  of  death,  but  not  being  allowed  to  cross 
has  come  back  and  reentered  him.  And  acting 
303 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

upon  a  similar  notion  the  ailing  Fiji  will  some- 
times lie  down  and  raise  a  hue  and  cry  for  his 
soul  to  be  brought  back.  Thus,  continues  Mr. 
Tylor,  "  in  various  countries  the  bringing  back 
of  lost  souls  becomes  a  regular  part  of  the  sor- 
cerer's or  priest's  profession."  *  On  Aryan  soil 
we  find  the  notion  of  a  temporary  departure  of 
the  soul  surviving  to  a  late  date  in  the  theory 
that  the  witch  may  attend  the  infernal  Sabbath 
while  her  earthly  tabernacle  is  quietly  sleeping 
at  home.  The  primeval  conception  reappears, 
clothed  in  bitterest  sarcasm,  in  Dante's  reference 
to  his  living  contemporaries  whose  souls  he  met 
with  in  the  vaults  of  hell,  while  their  bodies 
were  still  walking  about  on  the  earth,  inhabited 
by  devils. 

The  theory  which  identifies  the  soul  with  the 
shadow,  and  supposes  the  shadow  to  depart 
with  the  sickness  and  death  of  the  body,  would 
seem  liable  to  be  attended  with  some  difficul- 
ties in  the  way  of  verification,  even  to  the  dim 
intelligence  of  the  savage.  But  the  propriety  of 
identifying  soul  and  breath  is  borne  out  by  all 
primeval  experience.  The  breath,  which  really 
quits  the  body  at  its  decease,  has  furnished  the 
chief  name  for  the  soul,  not  only  to  the  He- 

1  Tylor,  Primitive  Culture,  i.  394.  "  The  Zulus  hold 
that  a  dead  body  can  cast  no  shadow,  because  that  appurte- 
nance departed  from  it  at  the  close  of  life. "  Hard  wick,  Tra- 
ditions, Superstitions,  and  Folk-Lore,  p.  123. 

3°4 


THE  PRIMEVAL  GHOST-WORLD 

brew,  the  Sanskrit,  and  the  classic  tongues ; 
not  only  to  German  and  English,  where  geist, 
and  ghost,  according  to  Max  Muller,  have  the 
meaning  of  "breath,"  and  are  akin  to  such 
words  as  gas,  gust,  and  geyser  ;  but  also  to  nu- 
merous barbaric  languages.  Among  the  natives 
of  Nicaragua  and  California,  in  Java  and  in 
West  Australia,  the  soul  is  described  as  the 
air  or  breeze  which  passes  in  and  out  through 
the  nostrils  and  mouth  ;  and  the  Greenlanders, 
according  to  Cranz,  reckon  two  separate  souls, 
the  breath  and  the  shadow.  "  Among  the  Sem- 
inoles  of  Florida,  when  a  woman  died  in  child- 
birth, the  infant  was  held  over  her  face  to  re- 
ceive her  parting  spirit,  and  thus  acquire  strength 
and  knowledge  for  its  future  use.  .  .  .  Their 
state  of  mind  is  kept  up  to  this  day  among  Ty- 
rolese  peasants,  who  can  still  fancy  a  good  man's 
soul  to  issue  from  his  mouth  at  death  like  a  lit- 
tle white  cloud."  *  It  is  kept  up,  too,  in  Lan- 
cashire, where  a  well-known  witch  died  a  few 
years  since  ;  "  but  before  she  could  'shuffle  off 
this  mortal  coil '  she  must  needs  transfer  her 
familiar  spirit  to  some  trusty  successor.  An  in- 
timate acquaintance  from  a  neighbouring  town- 
ship was  consequently  sent  for  in  all  haste,  and 
on  her  arrival  was  immediately  closeted  with 
her  dying  friend.  What  passed  between  them 
has  never  fully  transpired,  but  it  is  confidently 

1  Tylor,  op.  fit.  i.  391. 
305 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

affirmed  that  at  the  close  of  the  interview  this 
associate  received  the  witch's  last  breath  into  her 
mouth  and  with  it  her  familiar  spirit.  The 
dreaded  woman  thus  ceased  to  exist,  but  her 
powers  for  good  or  evil  were  transferred  to  her 
companion  ;  and  on  passing  along  the  road  from 
Burnley  to  Blackburn  we  can  point  out  a  farm- 
house at  no  great  distance  with  whose  thrifty- 
matron  no  neighbouring  farmer  will  yet  dare  to 
quarrel."  1 

Of  the  theory  of  embodiment  there  will  be 
occasion  to  speak  further  on.  At  present  let  us 
not  pass  over  the  fact  that  the  other  self  is  not 
only  conceived  as  shadow  or  breath,  which  can 
at  times  quit  the  body  during  life,  but  is  also 
supposed  to  become  temporarily  embodied  in 
the  visible  form  of  some  bird  or  beast.  In  dis- 
cussing elsewhere  the  myth  of  Bishop  Hatto, 
we  saw  that  the  soul  is  sometimes  represented 
in  the  form  of  a  rat  or  mouse  ;  and  in  treating 
of  werewolves  we  noticed  the  belief  that  the 
spirits  of  dead  ancestors,  borne  along  in  the 
night-wind,  have  taken  on  the  semblance  of 
howling  dogs  or  wolves.  "  Consistent  with  these 
quaint  ideas  are  ceremonies  in  vogue  in  China 
of  bringing  home  in  a  cock  (live  or  artificial) 
the  spirit  of  a  man  deceased  in  a  distant  place, 
and  of  enticing  into  a  sick  man's  coat  the  de- 

1  Harland  and  Wilkinson,  Lancashire  Folk-Lore,    1867, 

p.    2IO. 

306 


THE  PRIMEVAL  GHOST-WORLD 

parting  spirit  which  has  already  left  his  body 
and  so  conveying  it  back."  l  In  Castren's  great 
work  on  Finnish  mythology,  we  find  the  story 
of  the  giant  who  could  not  be  killed  because 
he  kept  his  soul  hidden  in  a  twelve-headed 
snake  which  he  carried  in  a  bag  as  he  rode  on 
horseback  ;  only  when  the  secret  was  discovered 
and  the  snake  carefully  killed,  did  the  giant 
yield  up  his  life.  In  this  Finnish  legend  we 
have  one  of  the  thousand  phases  of  the  story 
of  the  "  Giant  who  had  no  Heart  in  his  Body," 
but  whose  heart  was  concealed,  for  safe  keep- 
ing, in  a  duck's  egg,  or  in  a  pigeon,  carefully 
disposed  in  some  belfry  at  the  world's  end  a 
million  miles  away,  or  encased  in  a  well-nigh 
infinite  series  of  Chinese  boxes.2  Since,  in  spite 
of  all  these  precautions,  the  poor  giant's  heart 
invariably  came  to  grief,  we  need  not  wonder  at 
the  Karen  superstition  that  the  soul  is  in  dan- 
ger when  it  quits  the  body  on  its  excursions,  as 
exemplified  in  countless  Indo-European  stories 

1  Tylor,  op.  fit.u.  139. 

3  In  Russia  the  souls  of  the  dead  are  supposed  to  be  em- 
bodied in  pigeons  or  crows.  "  Thus  when  the  Deacon  Theo- 
dore and  his  three  schismatic  brethren  were  burnt  in  1681, 
the  souls  of  the  martyrs,  as  the  «  Old  Believers '  affirm,  ap- 
peared in  the  air  as  pigeons.  In  Volhynia  dead  children  are 
supposed  to  come  back  in  the  spring  to  their  native  village 
under  the  semblance  of  swallows  and  other  small  birds,  and 
to  seek  by  soft  twittering  or  song  to  console  their  sorrowing 
parents."  Ralston,  Songs  of  the  Russian  People,  p.  118. 

307 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

of  the  accidental  killing  of  the  weird  mouse  or 
pigeon  which  embodies  the  wandering  spirit. 
Conversely  it  is  held  that  the  detachment  of 
the  other  self  is  fraught  with  danger  to  the  self 
which  remains.  In  the  philosophy  of "  wraiths  " 
and  "  fetches,"  the  appearance  of  a  double,  like 
that  which  troubled  Mistress  Affery  in  her  wak- 
ing dreams  of  Mr.  Flintwinch,  has  been  from 
time  out  of  mind  a  signal  of  alarm.  "In  New 
Zealand  it  is  ominous  to  see  the  figure  of  an 
absent  person  ;  for  if  it  be  shadowy  and  the  face 
not  visible,  his  death  may  erelong  be  expected, 
but  if  the  face  be  seen  he  is  dead  already.  A 
party  of  Maoris  (one  of  whom  told  the  story) 
were  seated  round  a  fire  in  the  open  air,  when 
there  appeared,  seen  only  by  two  of  them,  the 
figure  of  a  relative,  left  ill  at  home ;  they  ex- 
claimed, the  figure  vanished,  and  on  the  return 
of  the  party  it  appeared  that  the  sick  man  had 
died  about  the  time  of  the  vision."  l  The  belief 
in  wraiths  has  survived  into  modern  times,  and 
now  and  then  appears  in  the  records  of  that 
remnant  of  primeval  philosophy  known  as 
"  spiritualism,"  as,  for  example,  in  the  case  of 
the  lady  who  "  thought  she  saw  her  own  father 
look  in  at  the  church  window  at  the  moment 
he  was  dying  in  his  own  house." 

The   belief  in  the   "death-fetch,"  like  the 
doctrine  which  identifies  soul  with  shadow,  is 
1  Tylor,  op.  cit.  i.  404. 
308 


THE  PRIMEVAL  GHOST-WORLD 

instructive  as  showing  that  in  barbaric  thought 
the  other  self  is  supposed  to  resemble  the  ma- 
terial self  with  which  it  has  customarily  been 
associated.  In  various  savage  superstitions  the 
minute  resemblance  of  soul  to  body  is  forcibly 
stated.  The  Australian,  for  instance,  not  con- 
tent with  slaying  his  enemy,  cuts  off  the  right 
thumb  of  the  corpse,  so  that  the  departed  soul 
may  be  incapacitated  from  throwing  a  spear. 
Even  the  half-civilized  Chinese  prefer  cruci- 
fixion to  decapitation,  that  their  souls  may  not 
wander  headless  about  the  spirit  world.1  Thus 
we  see  how  far  removed  from  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  souls  is  the  primeval  theory  of  the 
soul  or  other  self  that  figures  in  dreamland.  So 
grossly  materialistic  is  the  primitive  conception 
that  the  savage  who  cherishes  it  will  bore  holes 
in  the  coffin  of  his  dead  friend,  so  that  the  soul 
may  again  have  a  chance,  if  it  likes,  to  revisit 
the  body.  To  this  day,  among  the  peasants  in 
some  parts  of  Northern  Europe,  when  Odin, 
the  spectral  hunter,  rides  by  attended  by  his 
furious  host,  the  windows  in  every  sickroom 
are  opened,  in  order  that  the  soul,  if  it  chooses 
to  depart,  may  not  be  hindered  from  joining  in 
the  headlong  chase.  And  so,  adds  Mr.  Tylor, 
after  the  Indians' of  North  America  had  spent 
a  riotous  night  in  singeing  an  unfortunate  cap- 
tive to  death  with  firebrands,  they  would  howl 

1  Tylor,  op.  cit.  i.  407. 
309 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

like  the  fiends  they  were,  and  beat  the  air  with 
brushwood,  to  drive  away  the  distressed  and 
revengeful  ghost.  "  With  a  kindlier  feeling,  the 
Congo  negroes  abstained  for  a  whole  year  after 
a  death  from  sweeping  the  house,  lest  the  dust 
should  injure  the  delicate  substance  of  the 
ghost ;  "  and  even  now,  "  it  remains  a  German 
peasant  saying  that  it  is  wrong  to  slam  a  door, 
lest  one  should  pinch  a  soul  in  it."  l  Dante's 
experience  with  the  ghosts  in  hell  and  purga- 
tory, who  were  astonished  at  his  weighing  down 
the  boat  in  which  they  were  carried,  is  belied 
by  the  sweet  German  notion  "  that  the  dead 
mother's  coming  back  in  the  night  to  suckle 
the  baby  she  has  left  on  earth  may  be  known 
by  the  hollow  pressed  down  in  the  bed  where 
she  lay."  Almost  universally  ghosts,  however 
impervious  to  thrust  of  sword  or  shot  of  pistol, 
can  eat  and  drink  like  Squire  Westerns.  And 
lastly,  we  have  the  grotesque  conception  of  souls 
sufficiently  material  to  be  killed  over  again,  as 
in  the  case  of  the  negro  widows  who,  wishing  to 
marry  a  second  time,  will  go  and  duck  them- 
selves in  the  pond,  in  order  to  drown  the  souls 

1  Tylor,  op.  fit.  i.  410.  In  the  next  stage  of  survival 
this  belief  will  take  the  shape  that  it  is  wrong  to  slam  a  door, 
no  reason  being  assigned  ;  and  in  the  succeeding  stage,  when 
the  child  asks  why  it  is  naughty  to  slam  a  door,  he  will  be 
told,  because  it  is  an  evidence  of  bad  temper.  Thus  do  old- 
world  fancies  disappear  before  the  inroads  of  the  practical 
sense. 

3IO 


THE  PRIMEVAL  GHOST-WORLD 

of  their  departed  husbands,  which  are  supposed 
to  cling  about  their  necks  ;  while,  according  to 
the  Fiji  theory,  the  ghost  of  every  dead  warrior 
must  go  through  a  terrible  fight  with  Samu 
and  his  brethren,  in  which,  if  he  succeeds,  he 
will  enter  Paradise,  but  if  he  fails  he  will  be 
killed  over  again  and  finally  eaten  by  the 
dreaded  Samu  and  his  unearthly  company. 

From  the  conception  of  souls  embodied  in 
beast  forms,  as  above  illustrated,  it  is  not  a  wide 
step  to  the  conception  of  beast  souls  which,  like 
human  souls,  survive  the  death  of  the  tangible 
body.  The  widespread  superstitions  concerning 
werewolves  and  swan-maidens,  and  the  hardly 
less  general  belief  in  metempsychosis,  show  that 
primitive  culture  has  not  arrived  at  the  distinc- 
tion attained  by  modern  philosophy  between 
the  immortal  man  and  the  soulless  brute.  Still 
more  direct  evidence  is  furnished  by  sundry 
savage  customs.  The  Kafir  who  has  killed  an 
elephant  will  cry  that  he  did  n't  mean  to  do  it, 
and,  lest  the  elephant's  soul  should  still  seek 
vengeance,  he  will  cut  off  and  bury  the  trunk, 
so  that  the  mighty  beast  may  go  crippled  to 
the  spirit  land.  In  like  manner  the  Samoyeds, 
after  shooting  a  bear,  will  gather  about  the  body 
offering  excuses  and  laying  the  blame  on  the 
Russians ;  and  the  American  redskin  will  even 
put  the  pipe  of  peace  into  the  dead  animal's 
mouth,  and  beseech  him  to  forgive  the  deed. 
3" 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

In  Assam  it  is  believed  that  the  ghosts  of  slain 
animals  will  become  in  the  next  world  the  pro- 
perty of  the  hunter  who  kills  them  ;  and  the 
Kamtchadales  expressly  declare  that  all  animals, 
even  flies  and  bugs,  will  live  after  death,  —  a 
belief  which,  in  our  own  day,  has  been  indorsed 
on  philosophical  grounds  by  an  eminent  liv- 
ing naturalist.1  The  Greenlanders,  too,  give 
evidence  of  the  same  belief  by  supposing  that 
when  after  an  exhausting  fever  the  patient 
comes  up  in  unprecedented  health  and  vigour, 
it  is  because  he  has  lost  his  former  soul  and 
had  it  replaced  by  that  of  a  young  child  or  a 
reindeer.  In  a  recent  work  in  which  the  crudest 
fancies  of  primeval  savagery  are  thinly  disguised 
in  a  jargon  learned  from  the  superficial  reading 
of  modern  books  of  science,  M.  Figuier  main- 
tains that  human  souls  are  for  the  most  part  the 
surviving  souls  of  deceased  animals  ;  in  general, 
the  souls  of  precocious  musical  children  like 
Mozart  come  from  nightingales,  while  the  souls 
of  great  architects  have  passed  into  them  from 
beavers,  etc.,  etc.2 

The  practice  of  begging  pardon  of  the  animal 
one  has  just  slain  is  in  some  parts  of  the  world 
extended  to  the  case  of  plants.  When  the  Talein 
offers  a  prayer  to  the  tree  which  he  is  about  to 
cut  down,  it  is  obviously  because  he  regards  the 

1  Agassiz,  Essay  on  Classification,  pp.  97-99. 

*  Figuier,  The  To-morrow  of  Death,  p.  247. 

3I2 


THE  PRIMEVAL  GHOST-WORLD 

tree  as  endowed  with  a  soul  or  ghost  which  in 
the  next  life  may  need  to  be  propitiated.  And 
the  doctrine  of  transmigration  distinctly  includes 
plants  along  with  animals  among  the  future  ex- 
istences into  which  the  human  soul  may  pass. 

As  plants,  like  animals,  manifest  phenomena 
of  life,  though  to  a  much  less  conspicuous  de- 
gree, it  is  not  incomprehensible  that  the  savage 
should  attribute  souls  to  them.  But  the  primi- 
tive process  of  anthropomorphization  does  not 
end  here.  Not  only  the  horse  and  dog,  the 
bamboo,  and  the  oak-tree,  but  even  lifeless  ob- 
jects, such  as  the  hatchet,  or  bow  and  arrows, 
or  food  and  drink  of  the  dead  man,  possess  other 
selves  which  pass  into  the  world  of  ghosts.  Fijis 
and  other  contemporary  savages,  when  ques- 
tioned, expressly  declare  that  this  is  their  belief. 
"  If  an  axe  or  a  chisel  is  worn  out  or  broken  up, 
away  flies  its  soul  for  the  service  of  the  gods." 
The  Algonquins  told  Charlevoix  that  since 
hatchets  and  kettles  have  shadows,  no  less  than 
men  and  women,  it  follows,  of  course,  that  these 
shadows  (or  souls)  must  pass  along  with  human 
shadows  (or  souls)  into  the  spirit  land.  In  this 
we  see  how  simple  and  consistent  is  the  logic 
which  guides  the  savage,  and  how  inevitable  is 
the  genesis  of  the  great  mass  of  beliefs,  to  our 
minds  so  arbitrary  and  grotesque,  which  prevail 
throughout  the  barbaric  world.  However  ab- 
surd the  belief  that  pots  and  kettles  have  souls 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

may  seem  to  us,  it  is  nevertheless  the  only 
belief  which  can  be  held  consistently  by  the 
savage  to  whom  pots  and  kettles,  no  less  than 
human  friends  or  enemies,  may  appear  in  his 
dreams ;  who  sees  them  followed  by  shadows  as 
they  are  moved  about ;  who  hears  their  voices, 
dull  or  ringing,  when  they  are  struck  ;  and  who 
watches  their  doubles  fantastically  dancing  in  the 
water  as  they  are  carried  across  the  stream.1  To 
minds,  even  in  civilized  countries,  which  are 
unused  to  the  severe  training  of  science,  no 
stronger  evidence  can  be  alleged  than  what  is 
called  "  the  evidence  of  the  senses  ; "  for  it  is 
only  long  familiarity  with  science  which  teaches 
us  that  the  evidence  of  the  senses  is  trustworthy 
only  in  so  far  as  it  is  correctly  interpreted  by  rea- 
son. For  the  truth  of  his  belief  in  the  ghosts  of 
men  and  beasts,  trees  and  axes,  the  savage  has 
undeniably  the  evidence  of  his  senses  which 
have  so  often  seen,  heard,  and  handled  these 
other  selves. 

The  funeral  ceremonies  of  uncultured  races 
freshly  illustrate  this  crude  philosophy,  and  re- 
ceive fresh  illustration  from  it.  On  the  primi- 

1  Here,  as  usually,  the  doctrine  of  metempsychosis  comes 
in  to  complete  the  proof.  "  Mr.  Darwin  saw  two  Malay 
women  in  Keeling  Island,  who  had  a  wooden  spoon  dressed 
in  clothes  like  a  doll ;  this  spoon  had  been  carried  to  the  grave 
of  a  dead  man,  and  becoming  inspired  at  full  moon,  in  fact 
Junatic,  it  danced  about  convulsively  like  a  table  or  a  hat  at  a 
modern  spirit-seance."  Tylor,  op.  fit.  ii.  139. 

3*4 


THE  PRIMEVAL  GHOST-WORLD 

tive  belief  in  the  ghostly  survival  of  persons 
and  objects  rest  the  almost  universal  custom  of 
sacrificing  the  wives,  servants,  horses,  and  dogs 
of  the  departed  chief  of  the  tribe,  as  well  as  of 
presenting  at  his  shrine  sacred  offerings  of  food, 
ornaments,  weapons,  and  money.  Among  the 
Kayans  the  slaves  who  are  killed  at  their  master's 
tomb  are  enjoined  to  take  great  care  of  their 
master's  ghost,  to  wash  and  shampoo  it,  and  to 
nurse  it  when  sick.  Other  savages  think  that 
ff  all  whom  they  kill  in  this  world  shall  attend 
them  as  slaves  after  death,"  and  for  this  reason 
the  thrifty  Dayaks  of  Borneo  until  lately  would 
not  allow  their  young  men  to  marry  until  they 
had  acquired  some  post-mortem  property  by  pro- 
curing at  least  one  human  head.  It  is  hardly 
necessary  to  do  more  than  allude  to  the  Fiji  cus- 
tom of  strangling  all  the  wives  of  the  deceased 
at  his  funeral,  or  to  the  equally  well-known 
Hindu  rite  of  suttee.  Though,  as  Wilson  has 
shown,  the  latter  rite  is  not  supported  by  any 
genuine  Vedic  authority,  but  only  by  a  shame- 
less Brahmanic  corruption  of  the  sacred  text, 
Mr.  Tylor  is  nevertheless  quite  right  in  arguing 
that  unless  the  horrible  custom  had  received  the 
sanction  of  a  public  opinion  bequeathed  from 
pre-Vedic  times,  the  Brahmans  would  have  had 
no  motive  for  fraudulently  reviving  it ;  and  this 
opinion  is  virtually  established  by  the  fact  of 
the  prevalence  of  widow  sacrifice  among  Gauls, 

315 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

Scandinavians,  Slavs,  and  other  European  Ar- 
yans.1 Though  under  English  rule  the  rite  has 
been  forcibly  suppressed,  yet  the  archaic  senti- 
ments which  so  long  maintained  it  are  not  yet 
extinct.  Within  the  present  year  there  has  ap- 
peared in  the  newspapers  a  not  improbable  story 
of  a  beautiful  and  accomplished  Hindu  lady 
who,  having  become  the  wife  of  a  wealthy  Eng- 
lishman, and  after  living  several  years  in  Eng- 
land amid  the  influences  of  modern  society, 
nevertheless  went  off  and  privately  burned 
herself  to  death  soon  after  her  husband's  de- 
cease. 

The  reader  who  thinks  it  far-fetched  to  in- 
terpret funeral  offerings  of  food,  weapons,  orna- 
ments, or  money,  on  the  theory  of  object  souls, 
will  probably  suggest  that  such  offerings  may 
be  mere  memorials  of  affection  or  esteem  for 
the  dead  man.  Such,  indeed,  they  have  come  to 
be  in  many  countries  after  surviving  the  phase 
of  culture  in  which  they  originated ;  but  there 
is  ample  evidence  to  show  that  at  the  outset 
they  were  presented  in  the  belief  that  their 
ghosts  would  be  eaten  or  otherwise  employed 
by  the  ghost  of  the  dead  man.  The  stout  club 
which  is  buried  with  the  dead  Fiji  sends  its  soul 
along  with  him  that  he  may  be  able  to  defend 
himself  against  the  hostile  ghosts  which  will  lie 
1  Tylor,  op.  fit.  i.  414-422. 


THE  PRIMEVAL  GHOST-WORLD 

in  ambush  for  him  on  the  road  to  Mbulu,  seek- 
ing to  kill  and  eat  him.  Sometimes  the  club  is 
afterwards  removed  from  the  grave  as  of  no 
further  use,  since  its  ghost  is  all  that  the  dead 
man  needs.  In  like  manner,  "  as  the  Greeks 
gave  the  dead  man  the  obolus  for  Charon's  toll, 
and  the  old  Prussians  furnished  him  with  spend- 
ing money,  to  buy  refreshment  on  his  weary 
journey,  so  to  this  day  German  peasants  bury 
a  corpse  with  money  in  his  mouth  or  hand," 
and  this  is  also  said  to  be  one  of  the  regular 
ceremonies  of  an  Irish  wake.  Of  similar  pur- 
port were  the  funeral  feasts  and  oblations  of 
food  in  Greece  and  Italy,  the  "rice-cakes  made 
with  ghee  "  destined  for  the  Hindu  sojourning 
in  Yama's  kingdom,  and  the  meat  and  gruel 
offered  by  the  Chinaman  to  the  manes  of  his 
ancestors.  "  Many  travellers  have  described  the 
imagination  with  which  the  Chinese  make  such 
offerings.  It  is  that  the  spirits  of  the  dead 
consume  the  impalpable  essence  of  the  food, 
leaving  behind  its  coarse  material  substance, 
wherefore  the  dutiful  sacrificers,  having  set  out 
sumptuous  feasts  for  ancestral  souls,  allow  them 
a  proper  time  to  satisfy  their  appetite,  and  then 
fall  to  themselves." 1  So  in  the  Homeric  sacri- 
fice to  the  gods,  after  the  deity  has  smelled  the 
sweet  savour  and  consumed  the  curling  steam 
1  Tylor,  op.  tit.  i.  435,  446  ;  ii.  30,  36. 

31? 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

that  rises  ghost-like  from  the  roasting  viands, 
the  assembled  warriors  devour  the  remains.1 

Thus  far  the  course  of  fetichistic  thought 
which  we  have  traced  out,  with  Mr.  Tylor's  aid, 
is  such  as  is  not  always  obvious  to  the  modern 
inquirer  without  considerable  concrete  illustra- 
tion. The  remainder  of  the  process,  resulting 
in  that  systematic  and  complete  anthropomor- 
phization  of  nature  which  has  given  rise  to 
mythology,  may  be  more  succinctly  described. 
Gathering  together  the  conclusions  already  ob- 
tained, we  find  that  daily  or  frequent  experience 
of  the  phenomena  of  shadows  and  dreams  has 
combined  with  less  frequent  experience  of  the 
phenomena  of  trance,  ecstasy,  and  insanity,  to 
generate  in  the  mind  of  uncultured  man  the 
notion  of  a  twofold  existence  appertaining  alike 
to  all  animate  or  inanimate  objects  :  as  all  alike 
possess  material  bodies,  so  all  alike  possess 
ghosts  or  souls.  Now  when  the  theory  of  ob- 
ject souls  is  expanded  into  a  general  doctrine 
of  spirits,  the  philosophic  scheme  of  animism  is 
completed.  Once  habituated  to  the  conception 
of  souls  of  knives  and  tobacco  pipes  passing 
to  the  land  of  ghosts,  the  savage  cannot  avoid 
carrying  the  interpretation  still  further,  so  that 
wind  and  water,  fire  and  storm,  are  accredited 
with  indwelling  spirits  akin  by  nature  to  the  soul 

1  According  to  the  Karens,  blindness  occurs  when  the  soul 
yf  the  eye  is  eaten  by  demons.  Id.  ii.  353. 

318 


THE  PRIMEVAL  GHOST-WORLD 

which  inhabits  the  human  frame.  That  the 
mighty  spirit  or  demon  by  whose  impelling  will 
the  trees  are  rooted  up  and  the  storm-clouds 
driven  across  the  sky  should  resemble  a  freed 
human  soul,  is  a  natural  inference,  since  uncul- 
tured man  has  not  attained  to  the  conception  of 
physical  force  acting  in  accordance  with  uniform 
methods,  and  hence  all  events  are  to  his  mind 
the  manifestations  of  capricious  volition.  If  the 
fire  burns  down  his  hut,  it  is  because  the  fire  is 
a  person  with  a  soul,  and  is  angry  with  him,  and 
needs  to  be  coaxed  into  a  kindlier  mood  by 
means  of  prayer  or  sacrifice.  Thus  the  savage 
has  a  priori  no  alternative  but  to  regard  fire- 
soul  as  something  akin  to  human-soul  ;  and  in 
point  of  fact  we  find  that  savage  philosophy 
makes  no  distinction  between  the  human  ghost 
and  the  elemental  demon  or  deity.  This  is  suf- 
ficiently proved  by  the  universal  prevalence  of 
the  worship  of  ancestors.  The  essential  princi- 
ple of  manes  worship  is  that  the  tribal  chief  or 
patriarch,  who  has  governed  the  community 
during  life,  continues  also  to  govern  it  after 
death,  assisting  it  in  its  warfare  with  hostile 
tribes,  rewarding  brave  warriors,  and  punishing 
traitors  and  cowards.  Thus  from  the  concep- 
tion of  the  living  king  we  pass  to  the  notion  of 
what  Mr.  Spencer  calls  "  the  god-king,"  and 
thence  to  the  rudimentary  notion  of  deity. 
Among  such  higher  savages  as  the  Zulus,  the 
3*9 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

doctrine  of  divine  ancestors  has  been  devel- 
oped to  the  extent  of  recognizing  a  first  ances- 
tor, the  Great  Father,  Unkulunkulu,  who  made 
the  world.  But  in  the  stratum  of  savage  thought 
in  which  barbaric  or  Aryan  folk-lore  is  for  the 
most  part  based,  we  find  no  such  exalted  spec- 
ulation. The  ancestors  of  the  rude  Veddas  and 
of  the  Guinea  negroes,  the  Hindu  pitris  (patres, 
"  fathers  "),  and  the  Roman  manes  have  become 
elemental  deities  which  send  rain  or  sunshine, 
health  or  sickness,  plenty  or  famine,  and  to 
which  their  living  offspring  appeal  for  guidance 
amid  the  vicissitudes  of  life.1  The  theory  of 
embodiment,  already  alluded  to,  shows  how 
thoroughly  the  demons  which  cause  disease  are 
identified  with  human  and  object  souls.  In 
Australasia  it  is  a  dead  man's  ghost  which  creeps 

1  The  following  citation  is  interesting  as  an  illustration  of 
the  directness  of  descent  from  heathen  manes-worship  to 
Christian  saint-worship  :  "  It  is  well  known  that  Romulus, 
mindful  of  his  own  adventurous  infancy,  became  after  death 
a  Roman  deity,  propitious  to  the  health  and  safety  of  young 
children,  so  that  nurses  and  mothers  would  carry  sickly  in- 
fants to  present  them  in  his  little  round  temple  at  the  foot 
of  the  Palatine.  In  after  ages  the  temple  was  replaced  by  the 
church  of  St.  Theodorus,  and  there  Dr.  Conyers  Middle- 
ton,  who  drew  public  attention  to  its  curious  history,  used  to 
look  in  and  see  ten  or  a  dozen  women,  each  with  a  sick 
child  in  her  lap,  sitting  in  silent  reverence  before  the  altar  of 
the  saint.  The  ceremony  of  blessing  children,  especially 
after  vaccination,  may  still  be  seen  there  on  Thursday 
ings."  Op.  (it.  ii.  HI. 

320 


THE  PRIMEVAL  GHOST-WORLD 

up  into  the  liver  of  the  impious  wretch  who  has 
ventured  to  pronounce  his  name;  while  con- 
versely in  the  well-known  European  theory  of 
demoniacal  possession,  it  is  a  fairy  from  elfland, 
or  an  imp  from  hell,  which  has  entered  the 
body  of  the  sufferer.  In  the  close  kinship,  more- 
over, between  disease  possession  and  oracle  pos- 
session, where  the  body  of  the  Pythia,  or  the 
medicine-man,  is  placed  under  the  direct  control 
of  some  great  deity,1  we  may  see  how  by  insen- 
sible transitions  the  conception  of  the  human 
ghost  passes  into  the  conception  of  the  spiritual 
numen,  or  divinity. 

To  pursue  this  line  of  inquiry  through  the 
countless  nymphs  and  dryads  and  nixies  of  the 
higher  nature-worship  up  to  the  Olympian 
divinities  of  classic  polytheism,  would  be  to  en- 
ter upon  the  history  of  religious  belief,  and  in 
so  doing  to  lose  sight  of  our  present  purpose, 

1  Want  of  space  prevents  me  from  remarking  at  length 
.upon  Mr.  Tylor's  admirable  treatment  of  the  phenomena  of 
oracular  inspiration.  Attention  should  be  called,  however, 
to  the  brilliant  explanation  of  the  importance  accorded  by  all 
religions  to  the  rite  of  fasting.  Prolonged  abstinence  from 
food  tends  to  bring  on  a  mental  state  which  is  favourable  to 
visions.  The  savage  priest  or  medicine-man  qualifies  himself 
for  the  performance  of  his  duties  by  fasting,  and  where  this 
is  not  sufficient,  often  uses  intoxicating  drugs  ;  whence  the 
sacredness  of  the  hasheesh,  as  also  of  the  Vedic  soma-juice. 
The  practice  of  fasting  among  civilized  peoples  is  an  instance 
of  survival. 

321 


MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

which  has  merely  been  to  show  by  what  mental 
process  the  myth-maker  can  speak  of  natural 
objects  in  language  which  implies  that  they  are 
animated  persons.  Brief  as  our  account  of  this 
process  has  been,  I  believe  that  enough  has 
been  said,  not  only  to  reveal  the  inadequacy  of 
purely  philological  solutions  (like  those  con- 
tained in  Max  Miiller's  famous  Essay)  to  ex- 
plain the  growth  of  myths,  but  also  to  exhibit 
the  vast  importance  for  this  purpose  of  the  kind 
of  psychological  inquiry  into  the  mental  habits 
of  savages  which  Mr.  Tylor  has  so  ably  con- 
ducted. Indeed,  however  lacking  we  may  still 
be  in  points  of  detail,  I  think  we  have  already 
reached  a  very  satisfactory  explanation  of  the 
genesis  of  mythology.  Since  the  essential  char- 
acteristic of  a  myth  is  that  it  is  an  attempt  to 
explain  some  natural  phenomenon  by  endowing 
with  human  feelings  and  capacities  the  senseless 
factors  in  the  phenomenon,  and  since  it  has 
here  been  shown  how  uncultured  man,  by  the 
best  use  he  can  make  of  his  rude  common  sense, 
must  inevitably  come,  and  has  invariably  come, 
to  regard  all  objects  as  endowed  with  souls,  and 
all  nature  as  peopled  with  supra-human  entities 
shaped  after  the  general  pattern  of  the  human 
soul,  I  am  inclined  to  suspect  that  we  have 
got  very  near  to  the  root  of  the  whole  matter. 
We  can  certainly  find  no  difficulty  in  seeing 
why  a  waterspout  should  be  described  in  the 
322 


THE  PRIMEVAL  GHOST-WORLD 

"  Arabian  Nights  "  as  a  living  demon  :  "  The 
sea  became  troubled  before  them,  and  there 
arose  from  it  a  black  pillar,  ascending  towards 
the  sky,  and  approaching  the  meadow,  .  .  .  and 
behold  it  was  a  Jinni,  of  gigantic  stature."  We 
can  see  why  the  Moslem  camel-driver  should 
find  it  most  natural  to  regard  the  whirling 
simoom  as  a  malignant  Jinni ;  we  may  under- 
stand how  it  is  that  the  Persian  sees  in  bodily 
shape  the  scarlet  fever  as  "  a  blushing  maid  with 
locks  of  flame  and  cheeks  all  rosy  red ;  "  and 
we  need  not  consider  it  strange  that  the  pri- 
meval Aryan  should  have  regarded  the  sun  as 
a  voyager,  a  climber,  or  an  archer,  and  the 
clouds  as  cows  driven  by  the  wind-god  Hermes 
to  their  milking.  The  identification  of  William 
Tell  with  the  sun  becomes  thoroughly  intelli- 
gible ;  nor  can  we  be  longer  surprised  at  the  con- 
ception of  the  howling  night-wind  as  a  ravenous 
wolf.  When  pots  and  kettles  are  thought  to 
have  souls  that  live  hereafter,  there  is  no  diffi- 
culty in  understanding  how  the  blue  sky  can 
have  been  regarded  as  the  sire  of  gods  and  men. 
And  thus,  as  the  elves  and  bogarts  of  popular 
lore  are  in  many  cases  descended  from  ancient 
divinities  of  Olympos  and  Valhalla,  so  these  in 
turn  must  acknowledge  their  ancestors  in  the 
shadowy  denizens  of  the  primeval  ghost-world. 

August,  1872. 


323 


NOTE 

THE  following  are  some  of  the  modern  works  most  likely 
to  be  of  use  to  the  reader  who  is  interested  in  the  legend  of 
William  Tell. 

HISELY,  J.  J.  Dissertatio  historica  inauguralis  de  Gulielmo 
Tellio,  etc.  Groningae,  1824. 

IDELER,  J.  L.  Die  Sage  von  dem  Schuss  des  Tell.  Ber- 
lin, 1836. 

HAUSSER,  L.  Die  Sage  vom  Tell  aufs  Neue  kritisch  un- 
tersucht.  Heidelberg,  1840. 

HISELY,  J.  J.  Recherches  critiques  sur  Phistoire  de  Guil- 
laume  Tell.  Lausanne,  1843. 

LIEBENAU,  H.  Die  Tell-Sage  zu  dem  Jahre  1230  his- 
torisch  nach  neuesten  Quellen.  Aarau,  1 864. 

VISCHER,  W.  Die  Sage  von  der  Befreiung  der  Waldstatte, 
etc.  Nebst  einer  Beilage  :  das  alteste  Tellenschauspiel. 
Leipzig,  1867. 

BORDIER,  H.  L.  Le  Griitli  et  Guillaume  Tell,  ou  defense 
de  la  tradition  vulgaire  sur  les  origines  de  la  confedera- 
tion suisse.  Geneve  et  Bale,  1 869. 

The  same.  La  querelle  sur  les  traditions  concernant  1'ori- 
gine  de  la  confederation  suisse.  Geneve  et  Bale,  I  869. 

RILLIET,  A.  Les  origines  de  la  confederation  suisse  r^his- 
toire  et  legende.  2e  ed.,  revue  et  corrigee.  Geneve 
et  Bale,  1869. 

The  same.  Lettre  a  M.  Henri  Bordier  a  propos  de  sa 
defense  de  la  tradition  vulgaire  sur  les  origines  de  la 
confederation  suisse.  Geneve  et  Bale,  1869. 

HUNGERBUHLER,  H.  Etude  critique  sur  les  traditions  re- 
latives aux  origines  de  la  confederation  suisse.  Geneve 
et  Bale,  1 869. 

3*5 


NOTE 

MEYER,  KARL.  Die  Tellsage.  [/»  Bartsch,  Germanis- 
tische  Studien,  i.  159—170.]  Wien,  1872. 

See,  also,  the  articles  by  M.  Scherer,  in  Le  Temps,  18 
Feb.,  1868  ;  by  M.  Reuss,  in  the  Revue  critique  d'histoire, 
1868  ;  by  M.  de  Wiss,  in  the  Journal  de  Geneve,  7  July, 
1868  ;  also  Revue  critique,  17  July,  1869  ;  Journal  de 
Geneve,  24  Oct.,  1868  ;  Gazette  de  Lausanne,  feuilleton 
litteraire,  2—5  Nov.,  1868,  "  Les  origines  de  la  confederation 
suisse,"  par  M.  Secretan  ;  Edinburgh  Review,  Jan.,  1869, 
"  The  Legend  of  Tell  and  Riitli." 


INDEX 


INDEX 


ABGOTT,  significance  of  the  word, 
142. 

Achaians,  in  the  Homeric  poems, 
243  ;  in  the  historic  period,  243. 

Achilleis,  Crete's  theory  of,  253. 

Achilleus,  Greek  form  of  the  San- 
skrit Aharyu,  27,  l64n.  ;  his 
spear  a  solar  weapon,  32.  ;  as  a 
sun-myth,  33,  152,  267,272; 
the  Wrath  of,  considered  as  a 
structural  part  of  the  Iliad,  252- 
256  ;  not  conceived  of  by  Homer 
as  an  ordinary  mortal,  260  ;  his 
part  in  the  Iliad,  261,  262; 
known  in  Aryana-vaedjo,  263  ; 
his  parallel  in  the  Rig-Veda,  265. 

Adeva,  164. 

Aditi,  in  the  Rig-Veda,  142,  149. 

Adonis,  pierced  by  winter  as  a  boar's 
tusk,  33  ;  a  Semitic  divinity,  276. 

yEsop's  fables,  La  Fontaine's  bor- 
rowed from,  8. 

Agamemnon,  his  part  in  the  Iliad 
structurally  considered,  253—255  ; 
compared  with  Charlemagne, 
270-272.  _ 

Agassiz,  Louis,  on  the  belief  that 
animals  will  live  after  death,  in 
Essay  on  Classification,  312. 

Agni,  as  patron  of  marriage,  88  ; 
contradiction  in  the  Aryan  con- 
ception of,  149. 

Ahana,  the  Sanskrit  form  of  the 
Greek  Athene,  26. 

Aharyu,  Sanskrit  form  of  the  Greek 
Achilleus,  27,  16411.  ;  in  the 
Rig-Veda  solar  myth,  265. 

Ahi,  a  personification  of  the  storm- 
cloud,  78,  155,  i6oj  charac- 


teristics of,  retained  by  the  Devil, 
168. 

Ahmed,  arrow  of,  58  j  fairy  pavil- 
ion of,  67. 

Ahriman,  as  represented  in  the 
Zendavesta,  164,  165  ;  how  re- 
lated to  Satan,  165-167. 

Ahuramazda  in  the  Zendavesta,  165. 

Aias  not  conceived  of  by  Homer  as 
an  ordinary  mortal,  261. 

Aimoin,  on  the  Prankish  explana- 
tion of  the  word  Darast  in  De 
Gestis  Francorum,  97. 

Aineias,  as  the  sun,  151  ;  not  con- 
ceived of  by  Homer  as  an  ordinary 
mortal,  261. 

Aladdin,  ring  of,  60  ;  and  the  roc's 
egg,  68. 

Aleian  land  as  the  sky,  67. 

Alexandrian  library,  burning  of  by 
Omar,  an  untrustworthy  tradition, 
20. 

Alexikakos,  epithet  of  Herakles, 
159. 

Algonquin-Lenape  have  partial  dis- 
tinction between  animate  and  in- 
animate in  their  language,  24  n. 

Allegorical  interpretation  of  myths 
inadequate,  28,  288. 

Altdorf,  Tell's  lime-tree  at,  a. 

Ambrosia,  86. 

American  myths,  206—215,  229  ; 
their  resemblance  to  Aryan  myths, 
206,  213  ;  absence  of  a  certain 
class  of  dawn-myths  in,  213— 
215. 

Amrita  or  water  of  life,  86. 

Analogical  reasoning  among  barbari- 
ans, 291  ;  examples  of,  293. 


329 


INDEX 


Anaxagoras,  his  idea  of  the  moon,  25. 

Ancestor  -  worship,  connected  with 
the  feeling  of  metempsychosis, 
1 02,  1 06  ;  the  oldest  systema- 
tized form  of  fetichistic  religion, 
loz  ;  among  the  Hindus,  lozn.  ; 
in  China,  103  ;  a  portion  of  Brah- 
manism,  103  ;  in  the  Vedic  reli- 
gion, 103  j  rudimentary  notion 
of  deity  developed  from,  319;  be- 
came worship  of  elemental  deities, 
3*°- 

Angels,  related  to  the  Valkyries,  the 
Apsaras,  and  the  Houris,  139. 

Animals,  supposed  by  savages  to  have 
souls,  311;  instances  of  the  belief, 
311,  3125  belief  that  they  will 
live  after  death,  312. 

Animate  and  inanimate  in  primitive 
philosophy,  24,  298. 

Animism  and  myth-making,  291, 
318. 

Anro-mainyas  in  the  Zendavesta, 
164. 

Antigone    in    the    Oidipous-myth, 

155- 

Antiquity  of  man,  238. 

Antwerp,  origin  and  legend  of  the 
name,  98. 

Aphrodite,  as  the  moon  in  ancient 
mythology,  25  ;  as  Ursula  of  Ger- 
man mythology,  38  ;  Hephaistos 
and,  88  n.  ;  in  pre-Homeric, 
Homeric,  and  post-Homeric  times, 
256,  257  ;  a  Greek  divinity  with 
attributes  of  the  Semitic  Astarte, 
275. 

Apollo,  and  Laomedon,  32  ;  and  his 
lyre,  classed  among  wind-myths, 
44 ;  and  his  cattle,  47  ;  derived 
by  Gladstone  from  the  Hebrew 
Messiah,  274 ;  and  Athene,  the 
highest  types  of  divinity  among 
the  Greeks,  274,  275. 

Apsaras,  the  clouds  so  called  in  San- 
skrit, 131;  identical  with  the 
Valkyries,  139;  related  to  the 
Mussulman  Houris,  1 39. 

Arabian  Nights,  the  Jinni's  soul  in, 


14  n.  ;  Hassan  of  El-Basrah  in, 
17  n.  ;  feather  dresses  in,  135  n.  ; 
Queen  Labe  in,  1510.;  water- 
spout as  demon  in,  322. 

Argives,  in  the  Homeric  poems, 
243  ;  in  the  historic  period,  243. 

Argo  and  the  Symplegades,  73. 

Argonauts,  the  myth  of,  180. 

Argos,  the,  of  the  Iliad-myth,  273. 

Aristotle  on  the  date  of  the  Homeric 
poems,  244. 

Arkadians,  etymologically  "the 
children  of  light,"  loo. 

Arktoi,  the  Greek  name  of  the  con- 
stellation Great  Bear,  99. 

Armida's  gardens,  41. 

Artemis,  in  ancient  mythology,  25  ; 
as  Ursula  in  German  mythology, 
38. 

Aryana  F'aedjo,  a  projected  work, 
1 66  n. 

Aryan  folk-lore,  correspondence  in, 
18,  19. 

Aryan  immigration  into  Europe, 
266. 

Aryan  language,  has  been  partly  re- 
constructed, 237;  its  stage  of  de- 
velopment at  time  of  break-up  of 
tribal  communities,  237. 

Aryans,  Tell  legend  known  to,  while 
in  Central  Asia,  7  ;  their  first 
conception  of  a  Divine  Power 
suggested  by  the  Sun,  147  ;  their 
earliest  religion  not  a  monotheism, 
147,  148  ;  their  conception  of  the 
gods,  vague  and  unsystematized, 
148-150  ;  their  personifications 
and  conceptions  of  the  Sun,  149- 
156  5  as  myth-makers,  283. 

Ash,  as  a  lightning-tree,  74 ;  ety- 
mology of,  connects  it  with  spear 
and  arrow,  75  n.  ;  therapeutic 
properties  of,  83  ;  avoidance  of, 
by  snakes,  83  ;  first  man  made 
of,  in  Norse  mythology,  88  ; 
as  a  love-charm,  89  n. 

Asmodeus  and  the  schamir,  58. 

Ass,  story  of  the  enchanted,  138. 

Association  of  ideas  variously  illus- 


330 


INDEX 


trated  in  scientific  and  in  barbaric 

thought,  291. 

Astarte  as  rising  from  the  sea,  33. 
Astrology  based  on  primitive  analogy, 

294. 

Astyages,  a  mythical  creation,  I54n. 
Asuras  churning  the  ocean,  85. 
Asvins,  American  parallel  of,  211  n. 
Atavism    explained    in    the    Middle 

Ages  as  diabolical  metamorphosis, 

115,  116. 
Athene,    the    Greek    form    of  the 

Sanskrit  Ahana,  26  ;    derived  by 

Gladstone  from  the  Logos,  274  ; 

and  Apollo,  the  highest  types  of 

deity   among   the    Greeks,    274, 

ayS- 
Athenians,  personification  of  the  sky 

by,     24 ;    personification    of  the 

moon  by,  25. 
Attic    dramatists   and    dawn-myths, 

214. 
Austria,  Duke  of,  and  the  rebellion 

of  the  Swiss,  2. 
Australian    idea   of    departed  souls, 

309. 
Autolykos,   meaning  of  the   word, 

97- 

Auvergne,  werewolf  case  in,  124. 
Aymar,  Jacques,  51,  54. 
Azidahaka,  1 54  n. 

Baba  Abdallah,  ointment  of,  58,  79. 

Babel,  real  and  false  etymology  of, 
98  n. 

Bacon,  Francis,  Lord,  his  allegorical 
interpretation  of  myths,  288. 

Baga,  of  the  Cuneiform  Inscriptions, 
141. 

Bagaios,  epithet  of  Zeus,  141. 

Balder,  slain  by  winter  as  a  sprig  of 
mistletoe,  34. 

Banier,  Abbe,  his  false  theory  of  the 
character  of  myths,  20. 

Barbaric  languages,  have  no  com- 
mon ancestor,  201,  203  ;  neither 
widespread  nor  durable,  202. 

Barbarossa,  Frederic,  his  sleep  as  a 
winter  myth,  35,  272. 


Baring-Gould,  Sabine,  on  the  belief 
in  werewolves,  96  ;  on  homicidal 
insanity,  no;  his  reduction  of 
legends  to  story-roots,  156  n.  ; 
his  Book  of  Werewolves,  on 
thunder  and  snow-myths,  65  n.  ; 
on  the  Hindu  storm-wind,  1 06  ; 
on  cannibalism,  1 1 1— 1 14  j  on 
the  significance  of  the  word  Leich- 
nam,  138  n.  ;  his  Curious  Myths 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  on  supersti- 
tions, 23  ;  on  winter-myths,  35  n. ; 
on  legend  of  Tannhauser,  39  ;  on 
story  of  Aymar,  54;  on  light- 
ning as  serpents,  70  n.  ;  on  story 
of  Melusina,  132  n.  ;  on  swan- 
maidens,  222  n.  ;  his  Legends  of 
the  Patriarchs  and  Prophets,  on 
building  of  Solomon's  Temple, 
59  n.  ;  on  deluge-myths,  206  ; 
his  Silver  Store,  on  the  luck- 
flower,  56. 

Bazra,  meaning  of  the  word,  97. 

Beauty  and  the  Beast,  the  story  of, 
*34  n- 

Bedivere,  Sir,  his  brand  Excalibur  a 
solar  weapon,  32. 

Bedreddin  Hassan,  purse  of,  89. 

Belisarius,  story  of  his  blindness  an 
untrustworthy  tradition,  19. 

Bellerophon,  as  the  sun  in  ancient 
mythology,  25,  150;  arrows  of, 
31,  78,  79  ;  in  the  Aleian  land, 
67 ;  and  Anteia,  myth  of,  and 
that  of  Joseph  and  Zuleikha,  re- 
semblance between,  277. 

Benaiah  and  the  schamir,  58. 

Berserkers,  our  substitutes  for,  108  ; 
the  madness  of,  108,  109,  122. 

Beth  Gellert,  shown  as  the  grave  of 
Llewellyn's  dog,  9  ;  name  de- 
rived from  St.  Celert,  9  n. 

Bhaga,  in  Old  Aryan,  141  ;  the 
Aryan  conception  of,  141,  149. 

Bible,  the  story  of  the  serpent  in, 
1 66  ;  Satan  in,  r 66,  167. 

Birds,  as  bearers  of  rock-splitting 
talismans,  59,  60,  69  ;  as  clouds, 
68. 


331 


INDEX 


Bleek,  W.  H.  I.,  his  Hottentot 
Fables  and  Tales,  on  the  story 
of  the  Leopard  and  the  Ram, 
1770.5  on  moon-myths,  219; 
on  the  werewolf-myth,  223  n.  ; 
on  cannibals,  228. 

Blue-Beard  and  lightning  -  myths, 
81  n. 

Boabdil,  King,  his  sleep  a  winter- 
myth,  35. 

Bog,  the  Slavonic,  141-143. 

Bogie,  the  origin  of,  141-143. 

Boots,  the  crafty,  12 ;  as  a  wind- 
myth,  48  ;  who  ate  a  Match  with 
the  Troll,  story  of,  177. 

Bordier,  H.  L.,  in  Tell  bibliography, 
325. 

Brahman  and  goat,  story  of,  16. 

Breal,  Michel,  prefatory  note  on, 
vii  ;  on  dogs  as  psychopomps, 
47  ;  his  Hercule  et  Cacus,  150  n., 
157- 

Breath,  identified  with  soul,  304. 

Brebeuf,  Jean  de,  and  Iroquois  super- 
stitions, 212. 

Bridge  of  the  Dead,  myth  of,  205. 

Brinton,  D.  G.,  his  Myths  of  the 
Ne<w  World,  on  fire-myth  of 
Sioux  Indians,  84  ;  on  American 
myths,  206-214;  on  Ca"b  light- 
ning-myth, 229  n. 

Briseis,  Greek  form  of  the  Sanskrit 
Brisaya,  27  ;  her  parallel  in  the 
Rig- Veda,  265. 

Brown,  Robert,  his  Poseidon,  276  n.  ; 
no  Polyphemos's  eye,  72  n. 

Browning,  Robert,  his  Pied  Piper 
of  Hamelin,  42. 

Brunehault,  Brunhild  or  Brynhild 
possibly  drawn  from,  272. 

Brynhild,  1 80  ;  and  Sigurd,  a  solar 
myth,  1 8 1  ;  how  far  a  personifi- 
cation, 272. 

Buckle,  H.  T.,  on  the  Devil,  in 
History  of  Civilization,  169  n. 

Bug-a-boo,  the  origin  of,  141-143. 

Bugbear,  the  origin  of,  141-143. 

Bunsen,  C.  K.  J.,  Philosophy  of 
Universal  History,  97. 


Burnouf,  Eugene,  his  Bhaga-vata 
Purana,  on  Sanskrit  myth-tellers, 
72  n.  ;  on  the  Indra  legend, 
161  n. 

Byrsa,  Greek  word  for  hide,  con- 
founded with  Bazra,  97. 

Cacus,  Hercules  and,  explained  as  a 
sun-myth,  157—164;  the  name, 
corrupted  from  Caseins,  159  ;  a 
kinsman  of  Orthros  and  Kerberos, 
1 60. 

Caddo,  no  distinction  between  ani- 
mate and  inanimate  in  language 
of,  24  n. 

Czcius,  the  original  form  of  Cacus, 
159. 

Cain  as  placed  in  the  moon  by  Dante, 
36. 

Calender,  one-eyed,  tale  of,  founded 
on  lightning-myth,  81. 

Callaway,  Henry,  his  Zulu  Nursery 
Tales,  on  the  chark,  85  n.  ;  on 
cannibals,  224,  227,  228. 

Campbell,  Lord  Archibald,  on  Trolls, 
in  Tales  of  the  West  Highlands, 
176  n. 

Cannibalism,  cases  of,  hi  modern 
civilized  communities,  111-115. 

Cannibals  of  Zulu  legends,  origin  of, 
224  ;  myths  of,  225. 

Captain  of  the  Phantom  Ship,  place 
of  the  story  among  myths,  36. 

Cardinal  points,  primitive  worship  of, 
217  n. 

Carib  lightning-myth,  229. 

Carlovingian  romance  compared  with 
Iliad-myth,  269-272. 

^arvara,  Sanskrit  form  of  the  Greek 
Kerberos,  27,  1 68. 

Caseburg,  case  of  werewolf  trans- 
formation near,  123. 

Cassim  Baba,  57. 

Castren,  M.  A.,  found  Tell  legend 
in  Finland,  6 ;  on  the  soul  as 
embodied  in  animals,  307. 

Catequil,  Peru  thunder-god,  89  n. 

Cat-women,  125  n. 

Catalepsy,  fetichism  and,  300. 


332 


INDEX 


Catalogue  of  Ships,  the  arrangement 

of,  248. 
Cattle,   of  Hercules,  157,  1 60  ;  as 

clouds,  161,  1 80. 
Celestinus  and  the   Miller's  Horse, 

the  tale  of,  169  n. 
Ceylon,  moon-myth  of,  218. 
Chalons,  the  cannibalistic   tailor  of, 

in. 
Chamisso,  Adelbert  von,  his   Peter 

Schlemihl,  303. 
Changelings,  the  belief  in,    was   an 

attempt    to    explain     the  obscure 

phenomena    of    mental     disease, 

117-119. 
Chapiel,  La  Doctrine  des  Signatures, 

75- 

Charis  in  the  Homeric  poems  and 
later,  256,  257. 

Charites,  the,  257. 

Chark,  description  of,  84  ;  is  still  in 
use,  85. 

Charlemagne  of  romance,  the,  269— 
272. 

Charon's  ferry-boat  as  a  cloud,  in 
primitive  Aryan  lore,  66. 

Chateau  Vert,  corrupted  into  Shot- 
over,  98. 

Chaucer,  Geoffrey,  tales  of,  adopted 
from  Boccaccio,  8  ;  his  myth  of 
the  Man  in  the  Moon,  36. 

Cherokee  have  partial  distinction  be- 
tween animate  and  inanimate  in 
their  language,  24  n. 

Chesterfield,  P.  D.  Stanhope,  Lord, 
his  remark  on  the  capriciousness 
of  the  human  mind,  294. 

Chimaira,  relationship  of,  155. 

Chinese,  their  version  of  the  Gellert 
story,  9  ;  their  description  of  the 
roc,  68  n.  ;  their  idea  of  departed 
souls,  306,  309. 

Chios,  its  claim  to  be  the  birthplace 
of  Homer,  241  j  home  of  Ho- 
merids,  247. 

Choctaws,  no  distinction  between 
animate  and  inanimate  in  language 
of,  24  n. 

Cinderella,  177. 


Clerk  and  the  Image,  tale  of  the, 

79- 

Cloud-myths  appear  in  all  countries, 
205. 

Clouds,  as  cows  in  ancient  mythology, 
25  ;  as  sheep,  25  ;  as  swan- 
maidens,  25,  131,  1395  as  moun- 
tains or  rocks,  25,  73  ;  as  Val- 
kyries, 25,  1 80  ;  as  ships,  66, 
131  ;  as  psychopomps,  66  ;  as 
birds,  67—72,  131  ;  as  cattle, 
161,  1 80  }  as  the  Golden  Fleece, 
1 80. 

Codadad  and  his  brethren,  the  tale  of, 
a  sun-myth,  181. 

Colenso,  J.  W.,  on  the  Pentateuch, 
98  n. 

Comte,  Auguste,  on  fetichistic  no- 
tions in  animals,  298. 

Cows,  as  clouds,  25  ;  as  psycho- 
pomps,  66.  See  Cattle. 

Cox,  G.  W.,  on  the  tellers  of  old 
tales,  1 8  ;  on  the  belief  in  were- 
wolves, 96,  100,  120 ;  on  the 
Lykaon  myth,  96,  100  ;  on  the 
Berserker  madness,  122  n.  ;  his 
scepticism  and  dogmatism,  122  n.; 
on  the  legend  of  the  Herakleids, 
242  ;  on  Poseidon,  276  n.  ;  his 
Mythology  of  the  Aryan  Nations, 
1 2  n.  ;  on  Cyrus,  1 54 ;  on  the 
devil,  1 69  n. ,  1 70  ;  on  the  Iliad, 
261  ;  on  the  Odyssey,  266  ;  his 
Manual  of  Mythology  on  the 
grove  of  the  Erinyes,  155  ;  his 
Tales  of  Ancient  Greece  on  the 
Iliad  and  Odyssey,  266 ;  his 
methods  criticised,  285. 

Cranz,  David,  on  the  Greenlanders* 
idea  of  the  soul,  305. 

Criminals,  detection  of,  by  the 
divining-rod,  55  ;  in  myths,  77, 
283  n. 

Criticism,  modern,  and  William  Tell, 
i. 

Cross,  fragments  of  the  true,  as  valid 

proofs,  2. 

lulotte-Verte,  the  story  of,  a  sun- 
myth,  181. 


333 


INDEX 


Cushna  in  the  Rig-Veda,  160. 
Cyrus,  how  far  mythical,  1 54  n.  ;  a 
solar  hero,  268. 

Dagon  in  ancient  mythology,  25. 

Dahana,  the  Dawn,  154. 

Danaos,  daughters  of,  and  the  rainy 
sky,  66. 

Danish  account  of  William  Tell, 
4-6. 

Dante  Alighieri,  places  Cain  as  the 
Man  in  the  Moon,  36  ;  on  souls 
of  earthly  bodies  in  hell,  304. 

Daphne,  the  dawn,  154. 

Daras,  the  town,  the  Prankish  ex- 
planation of  the  word,  97. 

Darwin,  C.  R.,  the  chark  in  Nat- 
uralist's Voyage,  85  n.  ;  on  the 
dog  and  the  parasol  in  Descent  of 
Man,  298  n. 

Dasent,  Sir  G.  W.,  prefatory  note 
on,  vii }  on  Tell  legend  among 
Turks  and  Mongolians,  6  ;  on 
the  Berserker  madness,  109  n.  ; 
his  tale  of  the  white  bear  that 
marries  a  young  girl,  133,  134; 
his  Prose  Edda  on  Freyr's  cloud- 
ship,  67  n.  ;  his  Burnt  Njal  on 
witchcraft,  107  n.  ;  his  Popular 
Tales  from  the  Norse  on  Not  a  Pin 
to  choose  between  them,  173  n.  ; 
on  Trolls,  I76n. 

Dasyu,  night  demon,  153. 

Davy's  locker,  169. 

Dawn  as  detecting  crime,  78, 
283  n. 

Dawn-myths,  153,  155  ;  Ameri- 
can, 213  ;  Aryan,  214.  See  also 
Erinys. 

Daybreak-myths,  resemblance  be- 
tween lightning-myths  and,  78. 

Death,  savages'  idea  of,  102. 

Decius  and  the  Seven  Sleepers,  35. 

Delepierre,  Octave,  Historical  Diffi- 
culties, 4. 

Deluge-myths,  origin  of,  205. 

Demainetos,  story  of,  94. 

Demon,  the  application  of,  142. 

Descent  of  Fire,  the,  50-93. 


Deulin,  Charles,  on  Gambrinus,  in 
Contes  d"un  Bu-veur  de  Biere, 
175  n. 

Devas  churning  the  ocean,  85. 

Devil,  and  the  walnut,  as  a  wind- 
myth,  48  ;  derivation  and  history 
of  the  word,  143,  144  5  the 
mediaeval  conception  of,  167- 
1 69  ;  as  represented  by  the  Scotch 
divines  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
169  ;  mediaeval  legends  concern- 
ing, 169-175.  See  Satan. 

Dewel,  gypsy  name  for  God,  143  n. 

Dido,  and  the  ox-hides,  97  ;  her 
part  in  the  sun-myth,  151. 

Dietrich,  how  far  historical,  272. 

Dieu,  derivation  of  the  word,  143  n., 

'45- 

Digamma,  in  the  Homeric  poems, 
248. 

Diocletian's  ostrich,  story  of,  men- 
tioned, 59  n. 

Diodorus  Siculus,  158. 

Diomedes  not  conceived  of  by 
Homer  as  an  ordinary  mortal, 
261,  262. 

Dionysos  imitated  by  the  Devil, 
168. 

Dioskouroi,  American  parallel  of, 
211  n. 

Divination  based  on  primitive  anal- 
ogy, 294. 

Divining-rod,  used  to  find  water  in 
an  American  village,  50—55  ; 
as  symbolic  of  lightning,  in  find- 
ing water,  55,  77,  162  ;  in 
cleaving  rocks,  55,  74,  162  ; 
in  detecting  criminals,  55,  77; 
in  finding  hidden  treasure,  55, 
74,  77,  87  ;  must  be  forked, 
74,  87  ;  in  curing  disease,  8 1  j 
in  bringing  down  fire,  84  ;  as  the 
wish-rod,  89. 

Doctrine  of  signatures,  295  n. 

Dog  which  appeared  in  Faust's 
study,  1 68. 

Dogs,  howling  of,  47,  104  ;  as  the 
wind  bearing  away  souls,  47, 
104  ;  as  a  psychopomp  in  Persia 


334 


INDEX 


and  India,  47  n.,  104  ;  how  far 
capable  of  fetichistic  notions,  297. 

Don  Carlos  and  Queen  Elizabeth, 
30. 

Don  Juan,   his  prototype   the    Sun, 

ISO- 
Don  Sebastian  of  Portugal,  his  sleep 

as  a  winter-myth,  35. 
Donaldson,   J.    W.,    on   the   word 

Babel,  in  Neia  Cratylus,  98  n. 
Dorians,  date   of  their    conquest  of 

Peloponnesos,  242—244,  259  ;  as 

known  to  Homer,    243  ;  in  the 

historical  period,  243. 
Dousterswivel,  51. 
Dreams,     primitive    philosophy    of, 

295,  318. 
Drowning,  superstitions  in  regard  to, 

290. 

Durandal,  a  solar  weapon,  32. 
Dyaks  of  Borneo,  post-mortem  pro- 

perty of,  315. 
Dyaus,    the    meaning    of,    and    the 

form    in   cognate    languages,   26, 

67,  145-147,  149,  267  ;  yielded 

as  a  deity  to  Brahma  and  Vishnu, 


Earth,    symbols   of,    in    mythology, 

233,  234;  in  the  hypotheses  of 

Plato  and  Kepler,  234. 
Echidna,    a    personification    of    the 

storm-cloud,    78,    160  ;    charac- 

teristics of,  retained  by  the  Devil, 

168. 

Echoes,  other  self  in,  302. 
Ecstasy,  fetichism  in,  300,  318. 
Edda,  the  prose,  the  story  of  Prodi's 

quern    in,    89  ;    the   composition 

of,  249. 
Eden,   serpent  in,  an   Aryan  myth, 

166. 
Edward  I.,  King,  legend  concerning, 

30. 
Efreets,  the  Arabian,  48,  1  68,  175, 

179. 

Egg,  the  earth  as  an,  233. 
Egil,  the  Tell  of  Iceland,  6  ;  legend 

of,  traced  to  sun-myth,  32. 


Egyptian  story  of  a  Wali  and  a 
pot  of  herbs,  9. 

Eilden,  sorceress  of  the,  and  Thomas 
of  Erceldoune,  40. 

Eleanor,  wife  of  Edward  I.,  30. 

Elizabeth,  wife  of  Philip  II.,  30; 
Hungarian  Countess,  homicidal 
insanity  of,  no. 

Elves  in  Teutonic  mythology,  131. 

Embodiment,  theory  of,  306. 

Endymion,  his  slumber  as  a  winter- 
myth,  34  ;  and  Selene,  219. 

England  as  the  Phaiakian  land  of 
German  mythology,  38. 

English  peasants,  superstitions  of,  in 
regard  to  the  wind,  43. 

Eos,  a  more  recent  personification 
than  Athene,  268  ;  the  goddess 
of  the  sensuous  glories  of  day- 
break, 275. 

Epilepsy  explained  by  our  ancestors 
by  a  belief  in  changelings,  117, 
119. 

Epimenides,  his  sleep  as  a  winter- 
myth,  35. 

Epimetheus  and  Prometheus,  87. 

Erckmann,  fimile,  and  Chatrian, 
Alexandre,  story  of  Vittikab,  44. 

Erinys,  the  Greek  form  of  the  San- 
skrit Saranyu,  or  morning  light, 
77,  155  ;  in  the  Oidipous  sun- 
myth,  153—155;  the  degradation 
of,  167;  detecting  crime,  283  n. 

Erlking,  legend  of  the,  as  a  wind- 
myth,  41,  44. 

Eros  and  Psyche,  story  of,  134  n. 

Esquimaux,  no  distinction  between 
animate  and  inanimate  in  the 
language  of,  24  n.  ;  a  moon- 
myth  of,  219. 

Es-Sirat,  bridge  of,  Mohammedan 
rainbow-myth,  65. 

Etymology  a  source  of  myths,  96. 

Etzel,  how  far  historical,  272. 

Euhemerism,  whereof  it  consists, 
20  ;  and  American  myths,  207. 

Euphemisms  for  dreaded  beings, 
301  n. 

Eurykleia  and  Odysseus,  34. 


335 


INDEX 


Excalibur,  a  solar  weapon,  32. 

Excursions  of  an  E-vo/utionist,  chap- 
ters iii.-v.,  possibly  fragments  of 
the  projected  work,  Aryana 
faedjo,  1 66  n. 

Faber,  no  mention  of  Tell  in  chron- 
icles of,  a. 

«'  Faded  metaphors,"  263  n. 
Fafnir,  1 80. 
Fairies  degraded  by  Christianity,  133, 

'75- 

Faithful  John,  story  of,  10 ;  con- 
nection with  Gellert  myth,  10. 

Farid-Uddin-Attar,  Tell  legend  in 
Persian  poem  of,  7. 

Faro  Islands,  belief  of  the  inhabitants 
of,  in  regard  to  seals,  136. 

Fasting,  use  of,  in  producing  oracular 
inspiration,  321  n. 

Feather   dresses   in   folk-lore,    134, 

135- 

Fena,  use  and  form  of  the  word,  97 ; 
wrongly  identified  with  Phoinix, 
97- 

Fern,  renders  its  bearer  invisible,  60  ; 
avoided  by  snakes,  83. 

Ferrar,  W.  H.,  on  the  word  Latium, 
in  Comparative  Grammar  of 
Greek,  Latin,  and  Sanskrit,  99  n. 

Fetches,  philosophy  of,  308. 

Fetichism,  as  the  earliest  form  of  re- 
ligion, 148,  319  ;  in  primeval 
philosophy,  291— 321  5  in  ani- 
mals, 298. 

Fick,  August,  on  Bhaga,  in  Woer- 
terbuch  der  Indogermanischen 
Grundsprache,  142  n. 

Ficus  religiosa,  its  spear-like  leaves, 
75  n. 

Figuier,  Louis,  on  human  souls,  in 
The  To-morro-w  of  Death,  312. 

Fijians,  give  souls  to  natural  objects, 
24  n.  ;  their  theory  of  a  second 
death,  311. 

Fingal,  derivation  of,  97. 

Finnish  conception,  of  the  earth  as 
an  egg,  22  ;  of  the  storm-cloud, 
76. 


Fire,  ancient  Hindu  method  of  ob- 
taining, 84. 

Fire-drill,  Hindu,  84-87. 

Fire-myths,  84. 

Foi  scientifiquc,  and  divination,  52  ; 
preventive  against  self-deception, 

Folk-lore  of  all  Aryan  countries  has  a 

common  origin  with  Greek  gods 

and  heroes,  48,  323. 
Folliculus,  story  of,  10  n. 
Forget-me-not,    the   luck-flower    in 

lightning-myths,  56. 
Forty  Thieves,   story  of,  as  a  light- 
ning-myth, 57. 
Forum  Boarium,    the    place   where 

Hercules  pastured  his  oxen,  158. 
Fouque,    F.    H.    K.,    Baron  de  la 

Motte,  his  Sr  Elidoc,  82. 
Four  and  the  primitive  worship  of 

the  cardinal  points,  217. 
Freeman,    E.    A.,  on  Carlovingian 

romance,  269,  271. 
Freischiitz  and  Devil,  172. 
Frere,  Mary,  Old  Deccan  Days,  on 

Punchkin,  13. 
Freudenberger,  Uriel,  condemned  to 

be   burnt  for  doubting  the  story  of 

Tell,  4. 
Freyr,  the  cloud-ship  of,  67  ;  Norse 

Frodi  identified  with,  90. 
Frodi,  story  of  his  quern  a  lightning- 
myth,    89,    90  5    identified    with 

Freyr,  90. 
Frost-Giants,  176. 
Funeral  sacrifices  illustrating  theory 

of  object-souls,  315. 
Fury,  its  prototype  in  Sanskrit  means 

the  morning  light,  77. 
Fuseli,  J.  H.,  his  Mara,  126. 

Gaelic  musician,  lyre  of  the,  classed 
among  wind-myths,  44. 

Gaia,  a  more  recent  personification 
than  Demeter,  268. 

Gallon,  Francis,  his  theory  with  re- 
gard to  the  genius  of  the  Greeks, 
251. 

Gambrinusand  the  Devil,  173-175. 


INDEX 


Gandharba  Sena,  story  of,  134  n. 

Gandharvas,  or  cloud-demons,  130. 

Garcilaso  de  la  Vega,  his  anecdote  of 
the  Peruvian  Inca,  151. 

Garrows  in  Bengal  place  their  dead 
in  boats,  66  n. 

Gellert  story,  proved  to  be  a  myth, 
8  ;  a  form  of,  occurs  in  nearly 
every  Aryan  nation,  9  ;  versions 
of,  in  various  nations,  9-15. 

Gellius,  Aulus,  on  Kaikias,  160. 

Genesis  of  Language,  essay  on, 
196  n. 

Geryon  in  the  myth  of  Hercules  and 
Cacus  and  in  the  Greek  myth, 
157-161. 

Gessler,  no  such  name  appears  on 
the  charters  of  Kiissenach,  2. 

Gesta  Romanorum,  story  of  Folliculus 
in,  10  n.  j  story  of  Diocletian's 
ostrich  in,  59  n.  j  tales  of  the 
devil  in,  169  n. 

Ghosts,  primitive  belief  in,  297 ; 
connected  with  men's  shadows, 
303  ;  etymology  of,  305  ;  and 
funeral  sacrifices,  314,  316. 

Giant  who  had  no  Heart  in  his  Body, 
story  of,  12,  179;  resemblance 
to  Punchkin,  13,  215. 

Giant  with  his  Soul  in  a  Snake,  307. 

Giants  or  Trolls  as  uncivilized  pre- 
historic Europeans,  1 76. 

Gibbs,  J.  W.,  on  "faded  meta- 
phors," in  Philological  Studies, 
263  n. 

Girdles  used  by  werewolves,  122, 
123. 

Gladstone,  W.  E.,  his  Juventus 
Mundi  reviewed,  235-281  ;  his 
Studies  on  Homer  and  the  Homeric 
Age,  235. 

Glistening  Heath,  180. 

Gloves  of  Flemish  Nixies,  135. 

God,  derivation  of  the  name,  143  ; 
originally  meant  storm-wind,  268. 

Goethe,  J.   W.   von,    his    Erlking, 
41  ;  added   a 
252. 

Golden  Fleece  as  clouds,  1 80. 


new  part  to  Faust, 


Gorgon  Medusa,  benumbing  power 
of,  79. 

Graiai,  realm  of  the,  the  sky,  67. 

Great  Bear,  the  constellation,  origin 
of  the  name,  99. 

Greek  gods  and  heroes,  names  of, 
occur  in  Sanskrit  with  physical 
meanings,  26  ;  regarded  merely  as 
persons  by  the  Greeks,  27  ;  have 
a  common  origin  with  folk-lore 
heroes  of  all  Aryan  nations,  48, 

3*3- 

Greeks,  their  idea  of  the  sky,  66  ; 
the  date  of  their  entrance  into 
Europe,  266 }  their  colonization 
of  Asia,  271. 

Greenlanders'  idea  of  the  soul,  305. 

Grenier,  Jean,  the  case  of,  113, 
122. 

Grey,  Sir  George,  the  Australian 
natives,  in  his  jfournals,  183  n. 

Grimm,  J.  L.  K..,  on  interpretation 
of  mythology,  viii  j  on  die  com- 
mon origin  of  Aryan  mythology, 
194  ;  on  the  root  dev,  144. 

Grote,  George,  on  the  discrimination 
of  fancy  from  reality,  240 ;  on 
the  earliest  date  of  Greek  History, 
242  ;  on  the  artistic  structure  of 
the  Homeric  Poems,  252-256  ; 
his  History  of  Greece  on  the 
Homeric  Poems,  245,  248. 

Guillimann,  Francois,  one  of  the 
first  authors  to  doubt  the  story  of 
William  Tell,  3. 

Gunadhyi,  Sanskrit,  classed  among 
wind-myths,  44. 

Gunther,  a  personification,  272. 

Guodan,  the  name,  how  related  to 
God,  143. 

Gyges,  ring  of,  60. 

Gypsies,  their  use  of  the  word  devilt 
143- 

Hagen,  and  Siegfried  in  sun-myth, 
33  ;  a  personification,  272. 

Hamlet  as  a  sun-myth,  263  n. 

Hammerlin,  no  mention  of  Tell  in 
chronicles  of,  2. 


337 


INDEX 


Hand  of  Glory,  in  North  Europe 
mythology,  61  ;  story  of,  61  ; 
corresponding  hand  among  Mexi- 
cans, 62  ;  used  by  Irish  thieves 
in  1831,  62  ;  used  to  find  buried 
treasure  in  the  Middle  Ages,  63  ; 
interpretation  of  the  myth,  76. 

Hardrada,  Harold  and  Hemingr,  6. 

Hardwick,  Charles,  on  the  soul,  in 
Traditions,  Superstitions,  and  Folk- 
Lore ,  304  n. 

Hardy,  R.  S.,  his  Manual  of 
Buddhism,  105  n. 

Hare-lip,  origin  of,  according  to 
Hottentot  myth,  219. 

Harknd,  John,  his  Lancashire  Folk- 
Lore,  on  love-charms,  89  n.  ;  on 
witch  of  Lancashire,  306. 

Harold  Blue-tooth,  and  Palnatoki, 
4-6. 

Haroun  Alraschid  and  the  luck- 
flower,  57. 

Hasheesh,  reason  of  its  sacredness, 
321  n. 

Hassan  of  El-Basrah,  story  of,  17  n., 

!35n- 
Hatto,    Bishop,    story   of,    45  ;  his 

tower  a  "  customs-tower,"  98. 
Hausser,   L.,  in  Tell   bibliography, 

3*5- 
Hazel,    as    a    lightning-tree,    74 ; 

avoided  by  snakes,   83  ;  nuts  of, 

as  love  charms,  88,  89. 
Hazel  rod,  used  to  find  water  in  an 

American   village,    50-53  ;  as   a 

thrashing-rod,  91. 
Head,  Sir  Edmund,  on  the  Berserker 

madness,  in    ftga  Gluni's  Saga, 

109  n. 
Heartless  Giant,  story  of,  12,   179  ; 

resemblance    to    Punchkin,    13, 

"5- 

Hekataios,  no  literary  Greek  history 
before  the  age  of,  259. 

Hektor,  his  part  in  the  Iliad,  struc- 
turally considered,  255,  256  ;  not 
conceived  of  by  Homer  as  an  ordi- 
nary mortal,  261. 

Helena,  the  Greek  form  of  the  San- 


skrit Sarama,  26,  164  n.  ;  origin 
of  the  myth  of  the  faithlessness 
of,  164;  not  conceived  of  by 
Homer  as  an  ordinary  mortal, 
260,  267  ;  known  in  Aryana- 
vae'djo,  263  ;  her  parallel  in  the 
Rig-Veda,  265  ;  connected  with 
the  root  sar,  267. 

Helios,  the  same  as  Surya,  1 64  n.  ; 
a  more  recent  personification  than 
Apollo,  268  ;  Gladstone's  ex- 
planation of,  277. 

Helleand  Phrixos,  180. 

Hellenes,  in  the  Homeric  poems, 
243  ;  in  the  historical  period, 
243. 

Hemingr,  the  Tell  of  Norway,  6  ; 
story  of,  traced  to  sun-myth,  32. 

Henderson,  William,  Folk-Lore  of 
the  Northern  Counties  of  England, 
62  n. 

Hengst  and  Horsa,  credibility  of  the 
legend  of,  242. 

Hephaistos,  and  Aphrodite,  88n.  ; 
in  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey,  256, 
257. 

Herakleids,  legend  of,  242. 

Herakles,  as  degraded  by  Euhemeros, 
20  ;  and  Eurystheus,  32  ;  and 
Nessos,  33  ;  as  the  sun,  25,  150, 
152  ;  etymology  of,  158  n.  ;  con- 
fused with  Hercules,  158;  his 
epithet  Alexikakos,  159;  barbaric 
parallel  to,  213,  232. 

Heraldic  emblems  a  relic  of  the 
totems  of  savagery,  106. 

Hercules,  etymology  of,  1580.;  con- 
fused with  Herakles,  158  ;  origi- 
nal character  of,  158. 

Hercules  and  Cacus,  the  myth  of, 
explained  as  a  sun-myth,  157— 
164  5  attached  to  the  mediaeval 
Devil,  169. 

Here,  queen  of  the  blue  air  in  ancient 
mythology,  26. 

Hermai,  mutilation  of  the,  91. 

Hermes,  the  Greek  form  of  the 
Sanskrit  Sarameias,  25,  26,  47, 
164  n.,  276;  as  the  wind-god. 


338 


INDEX 


a  5,  47 ;  fusion  of  sun  and  wind 
gods  in,  43,  91  ;  in  Homeric 
Hymns,  47 ;  rod  of,  as  the  light- 
ning, 90  ;  leader  of  the  Pitris  in 
Vedic  religion,  104  ;  the  wish- 
hound  of,  104  ;  characteristic  of, 
retained  by  the  Devil,  168 ;  Ameri- 
can parallel  to,  206,  213. 

Herodotos,  on  the  date  of  Homer, 
242  ;  no  literary  Greek  history 
before  the  age  of,  259. 

Hertz,  Wilhelm,  on  the  belief  in 
werewolves,  96. 

Hiatus  in  Homeric  poems,  249. 

Hildesheim,  monk  of,  his  sleep  as  a 
winter-myth,  35. 

Hindus,  their  ideas  of  rain-clouds, 
66  ;  myth  of  churning  the  ocean 
with  Mount  Mandara,  85  ;  their 
belief  in  metempsychosis,  101  ; 
their  practice  of  self-immolation 
for  purposes  of  revenge,  1 02  n. 

Hisely,  J.  J.,  in  Tell  bibliography, 

.3Z5; 
Historic  period,  beginning  of,  239, 

240. 

Hitopadesa,  story  of  the  Brahman 
and  the  Goat  in,  16. 

Horsel,  the  Aphrodite  or  moon-god- 
dess of  German  mythology,  38, 

*57- 

Horselberg,  legend  of  the,  38. 

Holda,  46. 

Holy  water  traced  to  rainwater-myth, 
86  n. 

Homer,  knew  nothing  of  the  source 
of  his  myths,  72  ;  the  birthplace 
of,  240,  241  ;  identity  of,  240  ; 
his  date,  240—244,  258. 

Homeric  Hymns,  Hermes  in,  47. 

Homeric  legends  may  have  some 
historical  basis,  27  n. 

Homeric  poems,  the  state  of  society 
depicted  in,  237  ;  date  of,  240- 
244;  Greece  and  the  Greek 
tribes,  according  to,  242,  243  ; 
possibly  the  oldest  existing  speci- 
mens of  Aryan  literature,  244 ; 
Wolfs  theory  of  the  composition 


of,  245  ;  Wolfs  objection  that 
they  are  too  long  to  have  been 
preserved  by  memory,  246  ;  com- 
posed long  before  they  were  com- 
mitted to  writing,  248  ;  the  evi- 
dence of  language  on  the  question 
of  their  composition,  248  ;  inter- 
nal evidence  of  their  unity  of 
composition,  249—256  ;  the  lit- 
erary characteristics  of,  250—252  j 
their  artistic  structure  examined, 
252—256  ;  Grote's  theory  of  the 
composition  of  the  Iliad,  252— 
256  ;  arguments  for  the  divided 
authorship  of,  256  ;  Fiske's  view 
of  the  authorship  of,  257;  Glad- 
stone's view  of  the  authorship  of, 
258  ;  their  value  as  testimony  to 
the  truth  of  statements  therein 
contained,  260,  273  ;  their  con- 
tents compared  with  those  of  the 
Veda,  the  Edda,  and  the  Nibe- 
lungenlied,  263—266. 

Homerids,  the,  247. 

Homicidal  insanity,  the  cases  of  the 
Marechal  de  Retz  and  the  Count- 
ess Elizabeth,  1105  accompanied 
by  cannibalism,  in  ;  accom- 
panied by  hallucination,  112. 

Horsa  and  Hengst,  credibility  of  the 
legend  of,  242. 

Hottentot  myth  of  the  moon  and 
the  hare,  218. 

Houris,  related  to  the  Valkyries 
and  the  Apsaras,  139. 

Humboldt,  F.  H.  A.,  Baron  von, 
worship  of  the  cardinal  points  in 
his  Kosmos,  21 7  n. 

Hungerbuhler,  H.,  in  Tell  biblio- 
graphy, 325. 

Hydrophobia,  myth  of  the  prevention 
of,  293. 

Hyllos  and  Oxylos,  not  historical 
personages,  242. 

Hyperboreans,   the  garden  of,    155, 

Ida,  meaning  of,  154. 
Ideler,J.  L.,  in  Tell  bibliography, 
3*5- 


339 


INDEX 


Idiocy,  explained  in  the  Middle  Ages 
as  diabolical  metamorphosis,  116. 

Iliad,  the  sixth  and  the  twenty-fourth 
books  compared,  251  ;  Grote's 
theory  of  the  structure  of,  252- 
256  ;  the  characters  of,  not  con- 
ceived of  by  Homer  as  ordinary 
mortals,  260,  261.  See  Homeric 
poems. 

Iliad  myth,  known  in  Aryana- 
vaedjo,  263,  269  •  appears  in  the 
Veda  and  the  Nibelungenlied, 
263  ;  how  far  to  be  considered 
an  account  of  the  victory  of  light 
over  darkness,  263  n.  ;  formed 
of  mythical  conceptions  and  genu- 
ine tradition,  269  ;  compared  with 
Carlovingian  romance,  269-272. 

Use,  Princess,  and  the  luck-flower, 

Ilsenstein  shepherd,  story  of,  a  light- 
ning-myth, 56. 

Inanimate  objects,  supposed  by  the 
savages  to  have  souls,  24  n.,  313, 
323. 

Indian  summer  a  sun-myth,  34. 

Indians,  American,  their  sun-god 
and  winter  -  myth,  34  ;  regard 
lightning  as  fiery  serpents,  69, 

1  70  ;  their  explanation  of  the 
sun's  course,  152  ;  had  no  word 

I  to  express  the  idea  of  God,  148  n.  5 
mythology  of,  206-217;  their 

'  practice  of  driving  away  ghosts  of 
slain,  309. 

Indo-European  nations,  descended 
from  a  common  Aryan  stock, 
192  ;  possess  common  myths  and 
legends,  192. 

Indra,  and  the  cloud  mountains, 
72  n.  ;  mead  drunk  by,  86  ;  de- 
gradation of,  144  n.  ;  contradic- 
tion hi  the  Aryan  conception  of; 
149 ;  a  personification  of  light 
and  warmth.  149 ;  in  the  Rig- 
Veda,  160,  161,  163,265. 

Indra  conquering  Vritra,  myth  of, 
one  of  the  theorems  of  primitive 
Aryan  science,  194;  contained 


germs  of  a  theology,  1945  the 
parent  of  countless  myths,  1 94. 

Indra  Savitar,  the  golden  hand  of, 
76. 

Insanity  and  other  self,  301,  318. 

lokaste  in  the  Oidipous  sun-myth, 

lole  as  the  morning  and  evening 
light  hi  ancient  mythology,  25, 
265. 

loskeha,  legend  of,  211. 

Iris,  Gladstone  on,  276. 

Irish,  the,  origin  of  the  theory  of 
their  being  Phoenicians,  97. 

Iroquois  have  partial  distinction  be- 
tween animate  and  inanimate  in 
their  language,  24  n. 

Itshe-likantunjambili,  legend  of,  227. 

Itu  in  Polynesian  sun-myth,  230. 

Ixion,  his  wheel  as  the  sun,  26,  67  ; 
his  treasure-house  as  a  lightning- 
cavern,  8 1. 

Jack  and  Jill,  as  a  moon-myth,  37, 

288  ;  in  Sanskrit  myths,  38. 
Jack  and  the  Bean-Stalk,  found  all 

over   the   world,    31,    204;    in 

Malay  myth,  221. 
Jack  the  Giant-Killer,  177,  182. 
Jacolliot,  Louis,  his  Bible  in  India 

a  disgraceful  piece  of  charlatanry, 

278. 
Jehovah,  as  dispensing  good  and  evil, 

1 66;    unwillingness  of  the  Jews 

to  pronounce,  301  n. 
Jews,  their  idea  of  the  sky,  65  ;  their 

conception  of  Satan,  166. 
Jinn,  175. 
Job,  Book  of,  conception  of  Satan 

in,  1 66. 
Jotuns,  175. 

Jonah  and  the  whale,  105  n. 
Joseph  and  Zuleikha,  myth  of,  and 

that  of  Bellerophon   and  Anteia, 

resemblance  between,  277. 
Joseph  of  Arimathza  and  the  Holy 

Grail,    place    of  the   legend    of, 

among  myths,  36. 
Jupiter,   etymology   of,    25,    145, 


340 


INDEX 


146  j  the  original  hero  of  the 
Cacus-myth,  159. 

Justi  on  clouds  as  mountains  in 
Orient  und  Occident,  73  n. 

Justinian,  Emperor,  supposed  connec- 
tion with  Daras,  97. 

Ju-ventui  Mundi,  235-281. 

Kadmos,  American  parallel  to, 
206. 

Kaikias,  a  Greek  demon,  159. 

Kalidasa,  Kali  Das,  author  of  drama 
on  Urvasi  and  Pururavas,  130; 
and  the  dawn-myths,  214. 

Kallisto,  origin  of  myth  of,  100. 

Kalypso,  a  goddess  of  night,  272. 

Kalypso  and  Odysseus,  story  of, 
classed  among  moon-myths,  40  ; 
corresponds  to  Venus-Ursula  in 
the  Tannhauser-myth,  151  n. 

Kamtchatkan  lightning-myth,  229. 

Karl  the  Great  of  history,  270. 

Kasimbaha,  legend  of,  220. 

Kelly,  W.  K.,  on  connection  of 
suicides  and  storms,  77  ;  his  Indo- 
European  Folk-Lore,  on  placing 
the  dead  in  boats,  66  n.  ;  on 
snakes'  avoidance  of  certain  trees 
and  plants,  84  n.  j  on  churning 
the  ocean,  86. 

Kennedy,  Patrick,  his  Fictions  of 
the  Irish  Celts,  on  the  story  of 
Richard,  119  n.  ;  on  seal- women, 
136  n.  ;  on  Red  James,  138  n.  ; 
on  story  of  Sculloge  of  Muskerry, 
184. 

Kerberos,  Greek  form  of  the  San- 
skrit (jarvara,  27  ;  a  kinsman  of 
Cacus  and  Orthros,  1 60  ;  charac- 
teristics of,  retained  by  the  Devil, 
168. 

King  Arthur's  boat,  66. 

Kirke  as  a  dawn-maiden,  151  n. 

Klakkr,  Old  Norse,  means  both  cloud 
and  rock,  73  n. 

Kleisthenes,  edicts  of,  247. 

Kolbeck,  dancers  of,  their  place 
among  myths,  36. 

Koroibos,  the  Olympiad  of,  the  ear- 


liest ascertainable  date  in   Greek 

history,  240. 

Krates  on  the  date  of  Homer,  241. 
Krilof,  I.  A. ,  his  story  of  the  Gnat 

and  the  Shepherd,  10  n. 
Kuhn,  Adalbert,  prefatory  note  on, 

vii  ;     his    Die     Herabkunft    det 

Fetters  und  des  Gottertranks,  63  ; 

on  the  Mara,  1 3 1  n. ;  his  Beitrage 

on  the  Gypsy  use  of  the  word 

devil,  143  n. 

La  Fontaine,  Jean  de,  fables  of,  pat- 
terned after  those  of  y£sop  and 
Phzdrus,  8. 

Labe,  Queen,  151  n. 

Lachmann,  Karl,  on  the  composi- 
tion of  the  Iliad,  251. 

Lad  who  went  to  the  North  Wind, 
story  of  the,  91. 

Lady  of  Shalott's  boat,  66. 

Laios  in  the  Oidipous  sun-myth, 
152-154. 

Lancashire  witch  transfers  her  famil- 
iar spirit,  305. 

Lane,  E.  W.,  his  Arabian  Nights, 
on  the  Jinni's  soul,  14  n.  ;  on 
Hassan  of  El-Basrah,  17  n.  j  on 
feather  dresses,  1 3  5  n. 

Language,  a  permanent,  must  have 
a  basis  of  civilization,  202,  203. 

Languages,  all,  cannot  be  traced  to  a 
common  ancestor,  201. 

Lapps  as  Giants  or  Trolls,  I 76. 

Latium,  real  and  Vergilian  etymology 
of,  98. 

Lazarus,  Dr.,  account  of,  in  De 
r Intelligence,  53. 

Legends,  borrowing  and  lending  of, 
8,  18  ;  community  of  origin  of, 
10,  19  ;  correspondence  in  con- 
ception of,  15,  19;  tales  of  gran- 
nies, peasants,  and  servants  the 
source  of,  1 8  ;  the  beauty  and 
faithful  repetition  of,  19 ;  the 
marvellous  in,  21  ;  distinction  be- 
tween myths,  misrepresentations 
and,  29.  See  also  Myths. 

Leichnam,  etymology  of,  138. 


341 


INDEX 


Leopard  and  Ram,  story  of,  1 77  n. 

Leopold,  Duke,  at  the  battle  of 
Morgarten,  3. 

Lewis,  Sir  G.  C.,  the  retentive 
memory  of,  246. 

Liebenau,  in  Tell  bibliography,  325. 

Light  and  Darkness,  141—190. 

Lightning,  symbolized  by  a  divining- 
rod,  55,  74,  77,  78,  84,  89; 
symbolized  by  certain  plants  or 
trees,  56-58,  74;  as  schamir, 
58,  69,  76  ;  as  carried  by  birds, 
59  ;  benumbing  power  of,  79  ; 
as  a  benefactor,  8 1— 89  ;  as  the 
rod  of  Hermes,  90. 

Lightning-myths,  55-93  ;  resem- 
blance to  daybreak-myths,  78. 

Lightning-plants,  56-59.  See  Plants 
symbolic  of  lightning. 

Lightning-trees,  74. 

Literature,  the  beginnings  of,  mark 
the  growth  of  the  world,  238, 
239  ;  the  date  of  the  beginnings 
of,  239,  240. 

Littre,  M.  P.  E.,  oafoi  scientifique 
and  divination,  52. 

Livy  on  the  myth  of  Hercules  and 
Cacus,  157. 

Llewellyn  and  his  dog,  story  of, 
proved  to  be  a  myth,  8  ;  story  of, 
occurs  among  nearly  every  Aryan 
people,  9.  See  Gellert  story. 

Logos  the  source  of  Athene,  ac- 
cording to  Gladstone,  274. 

Lotos-eaters,  country  of,  the  sky,  67. 

Loup-garou,  etymology  and  meaning 
of,  95.  See  Werewolf. 

Luck-flower,  story  of,  56  ;  found  in 
Persia,  57  ;  makes  its  finder  in- 
visible, 60  n. 

Lucretius,  the  laissex-faire  divinities 
of,  104. 

Lunar  spots,  myths  concerning  the, 
36.  See  Moon-myths. 

Luxman  and  Rama,  story  of,  and  its 
connection  with  Gellert  myth,  1 1 . 

Lycanthropy,  regarded  as  a  species 
of  witchcraft,  108  ;  modern  cases 
of,  III,  115.  See  Werewolves. 


Lydus,  Johannes,  on  Sancus,  159. 
Lykaios,   epithet  of  Zeus,  meaning 

of,  96. 
Lykaon,  king  of  Arkadia,  story  of, 

94  ;  origin  of  story  of,  96,  100  ; 

his  legend  a  variation  of  that  of 

Tantalos,  loo. 
Lykegenes,     epithet     of     Phoibos, 

meaning  of,  96. 
Lykians,  etymologically   "  the  chil- 

dren of  light,"  100,  269. 
Lykourgos,   his  career   not   histori- 

cally clear,  259. 

Mackay,  R.  W.,  on  personification 

of  names,   in  Religious    Develop- 

ment of  the  Greeks  and  Hebrews, 

301  n. 
M'Lennan,  The  Worship  of  Animals 

and  Plants,  on  object-souls,  24  n.; 

on  metempsychosis  and  ancestor- 

worship,  101,  1  02  n. 
Mausethurm,    story  of,  45  ;   origin 

of  the  word,  98  . 
Magniisson,  Eirikr,  on  the  Berser- 


ker   madness,    in 
109  n. 


Grettis   Saga, 


Mahabharata,  the,  a   collection    of 

ballads,  245,  249. 
Mahaffy,  J.  P.,  his   Prolegomena  to 

Ancient  History,  on   etymologies, 

47  n.  ;  on  Odysseus  and  Polyphe- 

mos,     72  ;      on      myth-makers, 

183  n. 
Maitland,  Edward,  blasphemous  re- 

mark of,  141. 
Malalas,  Joannes,   on   the   explana- 

tion of  the  word  Daras  or  Doras, 

97- 
Malays,  their  belief  that  men    turn 

into  crocodiles,  222  n.  ;  instance 

of  belief  in  metempsychosis  among, 

314  n. 
Malleus  Maleficarum,    story  of  Tell 

in,  6. 
Man  in  the  Moon,   legends  of  the, 

36,  37- 


Manabozho,  legend  of,  208. 
Mandara,  Mount,  as  the  churning* 


342 


INDEX 


stick  of  gods  and  devils  in  Hindu 
myth,  85. 

Manes-worship  developed  into  the 
worship  of  deities,  319,  320. 
See  Ancestor-worship. 

Maoris,  their  divination  with  Venus 
and  the  moon,  294  ;  wraith  ap- 
pearing to,  308. 

Mara,  a  female  demon,  or  night- 
mare, 126;  character  of  the,  as 
nightmare,  illustrated  by  Nether- 
landish story,  127  ;  as  a  beautiful 
lady,  127,  128;  as  related  to 
the  Nixies,  or  Swan-maidens, 
128,  129  ;  original  characteristics 
of,  degraded  by  Christianity,  129, 
130;  in  Teutonic  mythology, 
1 3 1  ;  South  German  prescription 
for  getting  rid  of,  131. 

Marcus  Aurelius,  personification  of 
the  sky  in,  24  n. 

Martin,  B.  L.  H.,  on  the  Marechal 
de  Retz,  1 1 1 . 

Marvellous,  the,  in  legends,  21  ;  an 
important  factor  in  the  minds  of 
primitive  men,  21—23. 

Master  Thief,  legend  of  the,  1 5  ; 
as  a  wind-myth,  48. 

Maui  in  Polynesian  sun-myth,  230. 

Mbulu,  abode  of  departed  spirits  ac- 
cording to  Fijians,  24  n. 

Medeia  as  a  dawn-maiden,  151  n. 

Medusa,  her  relationship,  155. 

Meleagros  as  the  sun,  25,  33,  152. 

Melusina,  story  of,  131—133. 

Memnon,  son  of  the  Dawn,  269. 

Memory,  cases  of  extraordinary,  246, 
247. 

Menelaos,  how  far  historical,  272. 

Merchant  of  Louvain  and  Devil, 
171. 

Merlin,  spellbound,  as  a  winter-myth, 

35-  . 
Mermaid  as  foretokening  shipwreck, 

140. 
Mermaid's  cap  in  witchcraft,  136, 

137. 
Metempsychosis,  the  doctrine  of, 


lor  ;  connected  with  ancestor- 
worship,  1 01,  102  ;  connected 
with  belief  in  werewolves,  105- 
108,  311  ;  in  Malay,  314  n. 

Meyer,  Karl,  in  Tell  bibliography, 
326. 

Mice  as  souls,  45,  46,  306. 

Michabo,  sun-god  of  American  In- 
dians, 34,  100  ;  etymology  of  the 
name,  100,  209  ;  legends  of, 
208-212  ;  a  sun-god,  209,  212. 

Michelet,  Jules,  on  the  Marechal 
de  Retz,  no. 

Middleton,  Conyers,  on  children  be- 
ing brought  to  St.  Theodoras, 
320  n. 

Miledh,  the  epithet,  misunderstood, 

97: 

Milesian,  sobriquet  of  the  Irish,  97. 
Milesius,  the  mythical  hero,  origin 

of,  97. 

Milky  Way,  myth  of,  205. 
Mill,  J.  S.,  on  the  Iliad,  in  Dinerta' 

tions  and  Discussions,  256. 
Mirror,  myth  that  the  breaking  of, 

portends  death,  293. 
Mishkat-ul-Ma'sabih,  explanation  of 


the  nature  of  the  stars 


in,  29. 


found  in  all  parts  of  the  world, 

343 


Misrepresentations,  distinction  be- 
tween myths,  legends,  and,  30. 

Mistletoe,  as  a  lightning-tree,  74 ; 
therapeutic  properties  of,  83  j  and 
marriage,  88,  89. 

Mitra  in  the  Rig-Veda,  149. 

Moira  as  the  curse  in  the  story  of 
the  Wandering  Jew,  155  n. 

Mole  in  American  sun-myth,  23 1 . 

Mommsen,  Theodor,  on  Herakles 
and  Hercules,  in  Romische  Ge- 
schichte,  159  n. 

Monotheism  not  a  primitive  reli- 
gion, 147,  148. 

Moon,  and  hare  in  Hottentot  moon- 
myth,  1 28  ;  Jack  and  Jill  in  the, 
37- 

Moon-myths,  in  ancient  mythology, 
36—41  ;  barbaric,  218—220. 

Morris,  William,  on  the  Berserkers, 


Grettis  Saga,  109  n. 


INDEX 


Mouse  tower,  story  of,  45. 

Miiller,  Max,  prefatory  note  on, 
vii  ;  on  Greek  and  Sanskrit  ety- 
mologies, 27  ;  on  the  Great  Bear, 
99  ;  on  Sarama,  Helena  and 
Paris,  164  n.  ;  on  the  study  of 
words  and  myths,  196—200;  his 
Essay  on  Comparative  Mythology, 

282  ;  on  the  genesis    of  myths, 

283  j  on    the    personification    of 
names,  301  n.  ;  on  the  etymology 
of   ghoit,     305  ;    his    Rig-Veda 
Sanhita,  on  clouds  as  mountains, 
73  n.  ;    on    Bhaga,    142  n.  ;  on 
contradictions    in   the    theogonic 
speculations  of  the  Aryans,  149  ; 
his  Chips  from  a    German  Work- 
shop, on  the  Mara,   1 3 1  n.  ;  on 
the  degradation  of  Indra,  144  n.  ; 
on    the    predominance    of    solar 
myths,  183  n.  ;  on  words  in  de- 
rivative languages,  196,  197  ;  his 
Science   of  Language    on    Paris, 
263  n.,  268. 

Muir,  Sir  William,  on  the  Hindu 
storm-wind,  in  Sanskrit  Texts, 
1 06  ;  on  Bhaga,  142  n. 

Muri-ranga-whenua  in  Polynesian 
sun-myth,  230. 

Muskoghee,  no  distinction  between 
animate  and  inanimate  in  language 
of,  24  n. 

Mykenai,  the  seat  of  suzerainty  in 
the  Iliad,  271. 

Mythology,  of  the  ancients,  was  their 
attempt  to  explain  natural  phe- 
nomena, 21—28,  194;  methods 
of  philology  applied  to,  195—200, 
204,  322  ;  physical  geography 
compared  to,  200  ;  psychology 
and,  284,  322  ;  summary  of  the 
genesis  and  development  of,  322. 

Myths,  definition  of,  20  ;  the  mar- 
vellous as  the  root  of,  21  ;  em- 
body man's  first  ideas  on  physi- 
cal phenomena,  21—28,  194  ; 
allegorical  interpretation  of,  inade- 
quate, 28,  288  ;  distinction  be- 
tween legends,  misrepresentations, 


and,  29  ;  leading  incidents  remain 
constant  in  corresponding,  30  ; 
fading  of  primitive  meanings  of, 
70 ;  no  philosophical  symmetry 
in,  71  j  incongruities  in,  71,  72  j 
etymological,  96  ;  descended  from 
a  common  original,  193  ;  resem- 
blance between,  195,  197,  205, 
215  ;  description  of  natural  phe- 
nomena in,  194,  205,  286  $ 
Aryan  and  barbaric  compared, 
195,  201,  206,  213,  216,  217, 
225,  232  ;  kinship  in,  200,  203, 
205  ;  common  conceptions  in, 
205  ;  identity  in  details,  21 6  ; 
genesis  of,  282,  289,  291,  322  ; 
as  developed  into  superstitions, 
289. 

Myths  of  the  Barbaric  World,  191- 
234 ;  personification  of  natural 
phenomena  in,  195,  215  ;  can 
have  no  common  origin,  203  ; 
kinship  in,  204,  217;  absence 
of  a  certain  class  of  dawn-myths 
in,  213-215. 

Myth-makers,  explanation  of  natural 
phenomena  the  reason  for  the  ex- 
istence of,  283  ;  believed  in  the 
literal  truth  of  their  personifica- 
tions, 283  n.  ;  mode  of  thought 
of,  analyzed,  284—322. 

Names  of  lords  and  chiefs,  unwilling- 
ness of  savages  to  tell,  298  n. 

Nation,  The,  on  how  far  dogs  are 
capable  of  fetichistic  notions, 
298  n. 

Nature,  on  how  far  dogs  are  capable 
of  fetichistic  notions,  298  n. 

Nausikaa,  origin  of  the  myth  of, 
139. 

Necklace  of  Swan-maidens,  135. 

Nephele,  the  children  of,  correspond 
to  the  Panis  of  the  Rig-Veda  solar 
myth,  264. 

Nessos,  the  cloud  fiend,  in  ancient 
mythology,  33. 

Nestor,  not  conceived  of  by  Homer 
as  an  ordinary  mortal,  261. 


344 


INDEX 


New  World,  mythology  of,  206. 
Nibelungen  bards   and  dawn-myths, 

214. 
Nibelungenlied,     the    myth    which 

serves  as  the  basic  of,  1 80  ;  the 

Wrath    of   Achillas    in,     263  ; 

compared  with  the  Iliad,  272. 
Nibelungs  correspond  to  the  Panis  of 

the  Rig-Veda  solar  myth,  264. 
Niebuhr,  B.  C.,  the  retentive  mem- 
ory   of,     246  ;     his    philological 

theory,  279. 
Night  -  and  -  morning  -  myths,    their 

connection      with     storm-myths, 

161-164. 

Nightmare,  etymology  of,  126  n. 
Nixies  of  Flemish  legend,  135.     See 

Mara. 
Not  a  Pin  to  choose  between  them, 

173  n. 
Nou-veau  Journal  Asiatiqut  on  the 

roc  in  mythology,  68. 
Numa  and  Egeria,  legend  of,  classed 

among  moon-myths,  40. 
Numen,   transition  from  conception 

of  human  ghost  to  that  of,  321. 
Numerals,    loss   and    change   of,   in 

barbaric  languages,  202. 
Nymph,    meaning    of    the    word, 

132  n. 

Oberon,  and  his  horn  classed  among 
wind-myths,  44  ;  goblet  of,  89. 

Object  souls,  313—318,  322.  See 
Souls. 

Odin,  as  a  psychopomp,  44,  46,  47, 
309  ;  his  golden  ship  as  a  cloud, 
66  ;  as  lord  of  the  gallows,  77  ; 
his  lightning  spear,  9 1  ;  leader  of 
the  Pitris  in  Vedic  religion,  1 04 ; 
as  the  ogre  of  the  story  of  Jack 
and  the  Bean-Stalk,  108  ;  the 
name,  how  related  to  God,  143  ; 
characteristic  of,  retained  by  the 
Devil,  1 68. 

795 


Odysseus,   as  the  sun,  32, 


putting  out  the  eye  of  Polyphe- 


33, 
Poh 


mos,    72  n.  ;    and    Kalypso,   40, 


41,  151  n.,  272. 


Odyssey,  Grote's  theory  of  the  struc- 
ture of,  252.  See  Homeric 
poems. 

Oidipous,  29,  8 1  ;  the  story  of,  as  a 
sun-myth,  152-156,  268. 

Oinone  as  the  morning  and  evening 
light  in  ancient  mythology,  25, 

.'54- 
Ointment,  talismanic,  has  no  special 

mythical  significance,  74. 
Olaf,  Saint,  the  story  of,  178,  179. 
Olaf  Tryggvesson,    his   sleep    as   a 

winter-myth,  35. 
Old  Aryan,  Indo-European  languages 

descended  from  the,  191. 
Old  Nick,  169. 

Olger  Danske,  his  sleep  as  a  winter- 
myth,  35. 
Oracle  possession,  321  ;  fasting  and, 

321  n. 
Ormuzd,    how   represented    in    the 

Zendavesta,  164,  165. 
Orpheus,  legend  of,  as  a  wind-myth, 

43  ;  and   the  Symplegades,    73  ; 

characteristic  of,   retained  by  the 

Devil,  168. 
Orthros,  a  kinsman   of  Cacus  and 

Kerberos,  1 60  ;  the  Vritra  of  the 

Rig- Veda,  160. 
Ossa,  a  cloud  mountain,  73. 
Other  self,  primitive  doctrine  of,  296 ; 

in    catalepsy,    300 ;    in    portraits 

and   reflections,   30.1  ;  in  echoes, 

302;  in  shadows,  303.     See  also 

Soul. 
Ovid,  story  of  Lykaon  in,   94 ;  on 

the  myth  of  Hercules  and  Cacus, 

'57- 
Oxylos   and    Hyllos,    not   historical 

personages,  242. 

Palnatoki,  the  Danish  William  Tell, 
4-6 ;  story  of,  traced  to  sun-myth, 
32. 

Pan,  characteristics  of,  retained  by 
the  Devil,  168. 

Panch  Phul  Ranee,  Hindu  story  of, 


Panchatantra,  Gellert  story  in,  9. 

345 


INDEX 


Panis,  Sanskrit  prototype  of  Greek 
Paris,  27 ;  and  Ahi,  78  ;  in  the 
Rig- Veda,  1 60,  163,  164,  264, 
267 ;  whether  answering  to  Paris, 
1 64  n.  5  in  the  Zendavesta,  1 64  ; 
compared  with  Trolls  and  Zulu 
cannibals,  225. 

Pansa  the  Splay-footed,  the  Tell  of 
Norway,  6. 

Panther  in  the  fire-myth  of  Sioux 
Indians,  84. 

Pardon  begged  of  a  slain  animal  or 
hewn  tree,  311-313. 

Paris,  Greek  form  of  Sanskrit  Panis, 
27,  164  n.  ;  his  part  in  the  Iliad, 
2.61,  267  ;  known  in  Aryana- 
vae'djo,  263  ;  invested  with  at- 
tributes of  solar  heroes,  263  n., 
268. 

Parkman,  Francis,  on  the  idea  of 
God  among  the  North  Ameri- 
can Indians,  in  Jesuits  in  North 
America,  148  n. 

Parvata  means  both  cloud  and  moun- 
tain, 73  n. 

Patroklos,  his  part  in  the  Iliad, 
structurally  considered,  255,  256. 

Paul  Pry  as  a  wind-myth,  48. 

Pausanlas,  his  testimony  with  regard 
to  a  remote  antiquity,  of  what 
value,  259. 

Peisistratos,  Homeric  poems  said  to 
have  been  arranged  under  the 
orders  of,  245. 

Pelasgian  theory,  Niebuhr's,  279. 

Pelasgians  in  the  Homeric  poems, 
243. 

Pelion,  a  cloud  mountain,  73. 

Pentateuch,  the  composition  of,  249. 

Permanence  in  language  and  culture, 
conditions  essential  to,  203. 

Perseus,  a  solar  hero,  32,  1 8 1, 
268. 

Personification,  of  natural  phenom- 
ena, 24,  194,  322,  323  ;  of  in- 
animate objects,  24,  313—318, 
322. 


Peter  Schlemihl  belongs  to  a  widely 
diffused  family  of  legends,  303. 


Phsdrus,    fables    of,    borrowed    by 

La  Fontaine,  8. 
Phaethon,  son  of  the  sun  in  ancient 

mythology,  25. 
Philip  II..  the  charge  of  the  murder 


of  Elizabeth  a 


msrepresentaon, 


Philology,  in  connection  with  my- 
thology, 195—200,  204  ;  what  it 
tells  us  in  regard  to  civilization, 
202  5  an  exacting  science,  280. 

Philosopher's  stone,  89. 

Phoibos,  the  sun  in  ancient  mythol- 
ogy, 25  ;  Chrysaor,  the  bolt  of, 
31  ;  Lykegenes,  meaning  of  the 
epithet,  96. 

Phoinix,  wrongly  identified  with 
Fena,  97. 

Phoroneus  as  the  first  man,  88. 

Phrixos  and  Helle,  1  80. 

Pictures,  animation  of,  by  savages 
and  young  children,  301. 

Piper  of  Hamelin,  story  of,  42  ;  as  a 
wind-myth,  42,  43  ;  appearance 
of  the  story  in  Abyssinia,  43  j  as 
a  psychopomp,  is  followed  by  rats, 

45- 
Pitris,   the,  in    the   Vedic   religion, 

103,    104;     became    elementary 

deities,  320. 
Planchette,  its  relation  to  lafoi  scien- 

«fiV"i  53-   . 

Plants,  symbolic  of  lightning,  56— 
59  ;  reasons  for  the  choice  of, 
uncertain,  74  ;  therapeutic  proper- 
ties of,  82  ;  as  love-charms,  88  j 
supposed  by  savages  to  have  souls, 

3J3- 
Plato,  on  Demainetos  in  the  Republic, 

95  n. 
Pliny,    his    account    of  springwort, 

59  ;  on  a  snake  and  ash  rod,  83  j 

on   the  festival  of  Zeus  Lykaios, 

94- 
Plutarch,   his  testimony  with  regard 

to   a   remote   antiquity,   of  what 

value,  259. 
Polomyia,  the  cannibalistic  beggar  of, 


346 


INDEX 


Polyidos  and  Glaukos,  Greek  story 
of,  82. 

Polynesian  sun-myths,  229. 

Polyphemos,  his  eye,  as  the  sun, 
put  out  by  Odysseus,  67,  72  n.  ; 
the  story  of,  reappears  in  connec- 
tion with  the  Devil,  1 70. 

Pomeranian  myths,  schamir  in,  60. 

Porta  Trigemina,  its  connection  with 
the  myth  of  Hercules  and  Cacus, 
158. 

Poseidon,  uncertainty  in  regard  to, 
276. 

Possession,  and  primitive  doctrine  of 
other  self,  300  ;  demoniacal, 
European  theory  of,  321  ;  kinship 
between  that  of  disease  and  that  of 
oracle,  321. 

Pott,  A.  F.,  on  the  Gypsy  use  of 
the  word  devil,  in  Die  Zigeuner, 

143  "• 

Pramantha,  or  Hindu  fire-drill,  87. 
Preller,    Ludwig,     on     Sancus    and 

Herakles  in  Romische  Mythologie, 

1 60  n. 
Primeval  Ghost-World,  The,  283- 

I»S- 

Primeval  philosophy  and  rise  of 
myths,  21—28,  194,  289,  291. 
See  also  Myths. 

Princess  Parizade,  story  of,  men- 
tioned, 15. 

Prior,  R.  C.  A. ,  Popular  Names  of 
British  Plants,  75  n. 

Procopius,  De  Bella  Gothico,  38  n. 

Prometheus,  etymologically  con- 
nected with  the  Hindu  fire-drill, 
87  ;  myths  of,  87. 

Pronunciation  as  throwing  light  on 
the  composition  of  the  Homeric 
poems,  248. 

Propertius  on  the  myth  of  Hercules 
and  Cacus,  157. 

Psalms,  the  composition  of,  249. 

Psychopomp,  the  wind  as  a,  43  ; 
symbolized  as  a  dog,  47  ;  Odin 
as,  44,  46,  47,  309  ;  the  Piper 
of  Hamelin  as,  45. 

Puck,  his  relationship,  141. 


Puncher,    the  Tell   of    the    Uppef 

Rhine,  6. 
Punchkin,    story  of,    13,    179;  his 

resemblance      to      the     Heartless 

Giant,  215. 

Pururavas  and  Urvasi,  story  of,  130. 
Putraka,  story  of,  17. 
Pythian  festivals,  passages  from  the 

Iliad  sung  at,  247. 

Quetzalcoatl,  legend  of,  207,  213. 
Quichuas,  sun-god  of  the,  212. 

Rain-myths,  86. 

Rainbow-myths,  205. 

Rakshasa,  storm-wind  of  Hindu 
folk-lore,  105  ;  Cacus  as,  1 60. 

Ralston,  W.  R.  S.,  his  Krilof  and 
his  Fables,  10  n.  ;  his  Songs  of 
the  Russian  People,  on  the  raven- 
stone,  60  n.  ;  on  werewolves, 
121  n. ;  on  feather  dresses  in  folk- 
lore, 135  n.  ;  on  souls  in  pigeons 
and  swallows,  307  n. 

Rats  as  disembodied  spirits  or  souls, 
45,  46,  306. 

Raven-stone  as  rendering  its  owner 
invisible,  60. 

Reade,  Charles,  the  chark  in  Never 
too  Late  to  Mend,  85. 

Red  James,  story  of,  136,  137. 

Red  Riding-Hood,  true  version  of, 
105  n. 

Reflections  and  other  self,  302. 

Relics  as  evidences  of  the  truth  of 
miracles,  2. 

Renan,  J.  E.,  his  suggestion  rela- 
tive to  possible  discoveries  on  the 
origin  of  language,  236  5  his  His- 
toire  des  Langues  Semitiques,  on 
science  and  myth-making,  28  n.  ; 
on  the  word  Babel,  98  n. 

Retz,  Marechal  de,  homicidal  insan- 
ity of,  no. 

Reuss,  E.  W.  E. ,  in  Tell  bibliography, 
326. 

Reville,  Albert,  on  Satan,  1 6 6. 

Reynard,  story  of,  as  a  wind-myth, 
48. 


347 


INDEX 


Rhampsinitos,  story  of,  as  a  wind- 
myth,  48. 

Rhapsodes,  Solon's  ordinance  respect- 
ing, MS- 

Rickard  the  Rake,  story  of,  117, 
118. 

Rig-Veda.     See  Veda. 

Rilliet,   A.,    in    Tell    bibliography, 

.3*5- 

Rip  Van  Winkle,  his  sleep  as  a  win- 
ter-myth, 35. 

Robin,  as  representing  the  storm- 
cloud,  69 ;  its  connection  with 
the  god  Thor,  69  ;  wickedness 
of  killing  the,  69,  70,  289. 

Roc,  the,  as  the  storm-cloud,  68  ; 
egg  of,  as  the  sun,  68  ;  Euhemer- 
ism  and,  68  ;  in  Chinese  my- 
thology, 68  n.  ;  in  Arabic  and 
European  tradition,  69. 

Roland's  blade  Durandal  a  solar 
weapon,  32. 

Romulus,  as  a  solar  hero,  268  ;  as 
guardian  of  children,  320  n. 

Roulet,  Jacques,   the  case  of,    114, 

122. 

Rousseau,  J.  J.,  his  method  of  in- 
quiring into  the  safety  of  his  soul, 
295. 

Rumford,  Count,  his  process  of  ob- 
taining fire  by  friction,  84. 

Russ,  Melchoir,  the  younger,  first 
chronicler  of  William  Tell,  2. 

St.  George  and  the  Dragon,  tale  of, 
found  in  all  Aryan  nations,  30  ; 
a  sun-myth,  182. 

St.  Gertrude,  symbolized  as  a  mouse, 
also  the  receiver  of  children's  souls, 
46. 

St.  John's  sleep  at  Ephesus,  legend 
of,  as  a  winter-myth,  35. 

St.  Theodorus,  church  of,  and  Rom- 
ulus, 320  n. 

St.  Veronica,  handkerchief  of,  as  a 
proof  of  miracles,  2. 

Saint  -  worship,  Christian,  as  de- 
veloped from  manes  -  worship, 
320  n. 


Saktideva  and  the  fish,  105  n. 

Samoan  moon-myth,  218. 

Samoyeds,  Tell  legend  among  the, 
7,  8. 

Sancus,  the  Sabine  name  of  Jupiter, 
159,  1 60  n. 

Sangreal  and  wish  talismans,   89. 

Sarama,  the  Sanskrit  form  of  the 
Greek  Helena,  26,  164  n.  ;  in 
the  Rig- Veda  solar  myths,  161, 
163,  265,  267;  meaning  of, 
267. 

Sarameias,  Sanskrit  form  of  Greek 
Hermes,  26,  47,  164  n.  ;  some- 
times pictured  as  a  dog,  47. 

Saranyu,  meaning  of,  77  j  detecting 
crime,  283  n. 

Sarpedon,  not  conceived  of  by  Homer 
as  an  ordinary  mortal,  260,  262  ; 
a  solar  hero,  269. 

Sassafras  as  a  rock-breaking  plant, 
58. 

Satan,  how  related  to  the  Persian 
Ahriman,  165-167  ;  in  the  Book 
of  Job  and  in  the  later  books  of 
the  Bible,  1 6 6,  167.  See  Devil. 

Saxo  Grammaticus,  Danish  account 
of  Tell  by,  4-6. 

Scaletta,  a  passage  in  the  Alps,  tradi- 
tion of  its  name,  98. 

Scandinavians,  primitive  philosophy 
of,  22  ;  their  tales  of  elf-maidens 
a  form  of  wind-myth,  43  ;  their 
practice  of  burying  their  dead  in 
boats,  66. 

Scarlet  fever,  Persian  personification 
of,  323. 

Schamir,  as  a  worm  or  a  stone,  58  ; 
as  carried  by  birds,  59  ;  as  the 
hand  of  glory,  60,  76  5  as  render- 
ing its  possessor  invisible,  60 ; 
myths  of,  explain  the  rending  of 
the  thunder-cloud,  63,  162. 

Scherer  in  Tell  bibliography,  326. 

Sclavonic  rain-myth,  86. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  drew  material  for 
IvanAoe  from  William  of  Cloudes- 
lee,  6. 

Scribe,  A.  E.,  his  remark  about  the 


348 


INDEX 


possible  number  of  dramatic  situa- 
tions, 156,  1 80. 

Sculloge  of  Musketry,  the  legend  of, 
184-190. 

Sea,  saltness  of,  explained  by  a  myth, 
90. 

Sea  of  Streams  of  Story,  mentioned, 

»7« 

Seal-women,  136. 

Sebastian  of  Portugal,  35. 

Selene,  and  Endymion,  2.19  ;  a  more 
recent  personification  than  Artemis 
and  Persephone,  268. 

Seminoles,  their  idea  of  breath  as  the 
soul,  305. 

Serpent  in  Eden,  the  story  of,  is 
Aryan,  1 66  ;  not  alluded  to  in 
Old  Testament,  166;  identified 
with  Satan  in  modern  theology 
only,  1 6  6. 

Serpents,  lightning  as,  69. 

Sesame,  its  talismanic  power,  571. 

Sesha  used  as  a  rope  around  Mount 
Mandara,  85. 

Seven,  number,  as  connected  with 
the  adoration  of  the  sun,  moon 
and  five  planets,  217. 

Seven  Sleepers  of  Ephesus,  as  a  win- 
ter-myth, 35. 

Seyf-el-Mulook  and  Bedeea-el-Jemal, 
story  of,  14  n. 

Shadow,  as  soul  or  other  self,  303, 
318. 

Shakespeare,  William,  his  myth  of 
the  Man  in  the  Moon,  36  ; 
miraculous  fern-seed  in  his  King 
Henry  IV.,  60  n.  ;  his  Hamlet 
originally  the  story  of  the  quar- 
rel between  summer  and  winter, 
263  n. 

Shotover,  corruption  of  Chateau 
Vert,  98. 

Siberian  swan-maiden-myth,  221. 

Siegfried,  as  a  sun-myth,  33  ;  his 
slumber  as  a  winter-myth,  34 ; 
a  personification  of  physical  phe- 
nomena, 272. 

Sieve  of  the  daughters  of  Danaos, 
66. 


Signature,    old  medical  doctrine  of, 

_  75  n- 

Sigurd,  sword  of,  a  solar  weapon, 
32  j  slain  by  winter  as  a  thorn, 
34  ;  the  tale  of,  and  that  of  Her- 
cules and  Cacus,  resemblance  be- 
tween, 1 80,  181. 

Simoon,  Moslem  personification  of, 
3*3- 

Simrock,  Karl,  on  the  Hamlet- 
myth,  in  Die  Quellcn  des  Shake- 
speare, 263  n. 

Sindbad,  tale  of,  68. 

Sioux  Indians,  their  fire-myth  corre- 
sponds with  Aryan  lightning-myth, 
84. 

Sirens,  Greek,  legend  of,  as  a  wind- 
myth,  43. 

Sisyphos,  stone  of,  as  the  sun,  67. 

Skin-changers,  a  name  for  were- 
wolves, 121. 

Skithblathnir,  the  cloud -ship  of 
Freyr,  67  n. 

Sky,  as  revealed  by  x  science,  63  j 
children's  idea  of,  64,  65  ;  an- 
cient Jewish  idea  of,  65  ;  Greek 
idea  of,  66  ;  as  a  sea,  66,  131  ; 
starry,  as  a  valley  of  diamonds, 
68. 

Skye-terrier  and  ball,  297. 

Sleeping  Beauty  as  a  winter-myth  in 
ancient  mythology,  34. 

Smith,  Sir  William,  Dictionary  of 
the  Bible,  98  n. 

Snakes,  their  avoidance  of  the  ash, 
83. 

Snow,  German  myth  of,  65  n. 

Solar  myth  in  early  times  a  type  of 
all  myths,  272.  See  Sun-myths. 

Solomon  and  the  schamir,  58. 

Solon,  inference  drawn  from  his 
ordinance  respecting  rhapsodes, 
245  ;  edicts  of,  247. 

Soma  as  life-imparting  deity,  88  n. 

Soma-juice,  reason  of  its  sacredness, 
321  n. 

Somadeva  Bhatta,  his  Sea  of  Streams 
of  Story  on  tale  of  Putraka,  175 
on  Saktideva  and  the  fish,  105  n. 


349 


INDEX 


Somnambulism  and  other  self,  301. 

Song  of  Sixpence,  interpretation  of, 
287. 

Sophocles,  E.  A.,  the  retentive 
memory  of,  246. 

Souls,  symbolized  by  rats,  45,  46, 
306  ;  as  quitting  the  body  during 
lifetime,  303,  304  ;  as  shadows, 
3°3.  3I35  as  breath,  304;  as 
temporarily  embodied  in  birds  or 
beasts,  306—308  ;  as  resembling 
bodies,  308-310;  as  killed  over 
again,  310  ;  of  beasts,  311  ;  of 
plants,  312  ;  of  inanimate  ob- 
jects, 24  n.,  313,  318,  322. 

Souris,  derivation  of  the  two  French 
words,  197. 

South  African  werewolf-myth,  222. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  on  metempsychosis 
and  ancestor  -  worship,  in  The 
Origin  of  Animal  Worship,  101, 
102  n.,  106,  296n. ;  his  Recent 
Discussions  in  Science,  102  n.  ; 
on  the  animation  '  of  pictures, 
301. 

Spenser,  Edmund,  story  of  Sir  Guyon 
in  his  Faery  Sjueen,  81  n. 

Spentomainyas  in  the  Zendavesta, 
165. 

Sphinx,  as  the  thunder-cloud,  81  ; 
in  the  Oidipous  sun-myth,  153— 

!55- 

Spirits,  doctrine  of,  304-318  ;  peo- 
pling of  natural  phenomena  with, 

318.      See  also  Souls. 
Spiritualism    and    belief  in    wraiths, 

308. 

Spoon,  dancing,  314  n. 
Springwort,  its  power  to  cleave  rock 

in  lightning-myths,  59,  74. 
Stars,    nature    of,    as    explained    by 

science    and    ancient    mythology, 

29  ;  in  the  Vedic   religion,  103  ; 

German  and  English  superstitions 

with  regard  to,  104. 
Stauffacher,  his  fame  less  wide  than 

William  Tell's,  i. 
Storm-cloud  as  a  bird,  59,  69. 
Storm-myths,  their  connection  with 


night  and-morning-myths,     1 6 1— 
164. 

Sun,  suggested  the  earliest  conception 
of  a  Divine  Power,  147  ;  Aryan 
personifications  and  conceptions 
of,  25.  149-156. 

Sun-myths,  Aryan  folk-lore  tales  as, 
1—31  ;  in  ancient  mythology,  I, 
31—33,  67;  incongruity  in,  725 
their  great  variety,  150—156, 
180—182;  why  they  are  so  nu- 
merous, 1 84  ;  appear  in  all  coun- 
tries, 205  ;  Barbaric,  208-215, 
229,  231  ;  the  Iliad-myth  as, 
263-266. 

Sunset  clouds  as  representing  hell  to 
childish  and  barbaric  minds,  64. 

Superstitions,  interpretation  of,  diffi- 
cult, vii ;  of  our  primitive  ances- 
tors, 22,  23. 

Surya,  the  same  as  Helios,  164  n. 

Suttee,  not  sustained  by  Vedic  au- 
thority, 315;  found  among  Euro- 
pean Aryans,  316;  remarkable 
case  of,  in  England,  316. 

Swan,  Charles,  translator.  See  Gesta 
Romanorum. 

Swan-maidens,  and  their  dress,  1 34, 
135  ;  compared  with  werewolves, 
139  ;  originally,  the  clouds,  189  ; 
barbaric  myths  of,  220—222. 

Swearing,  objection  to,  traced  to  its 
source,  301  n. 

Swiss,  cicerone  class  of,  I. 

Symplegades,  as  cloud  mountains, 
73  ;  as  the  gates  of  night,  73  n. 

Table-tipping    and   foi    scientijique^ 

53: 

Tahitian  language,  loss  ,and  change 
of  numerals  in,  202. 

Taine,  H.  A.,  his  De  P  Intelligence 
on  Dr.  Lazarus,  53  n.  ;  on  were- 
wolves, 121  n. 

Tannhauser,  story  of,  38  ;  in  the 
German  moon-myths,  38,  41  j 
recurs  in  the  folk-lore  of  all  Aryaa 
nations,  40. 

Tantalos,  the  legend  of,  zoo. 


350 


INDEX 


Tartars,  Minussinian,  swan-maiden- 
myths  of,  22.2. 

Tawiskara,  legend  of,  211. 

Taylor,  Isaac,  Words  and  Places,  on 
derivation  of  Beth-Gellert,  9  n.  ; 
on  the  Antwerp  legend,  98  n. 

Tell,  William,  story  of,  a  myth,  1-8, 
20  j  details  of  no  two  accounts 
agree,  3  ;  first  authors  to  doubt 
the  story,  3  ;  the  Danish  account 
of,  4  ;  account  appears  in  various 
nations,  6 ;  known  to  Aryans 
while  in  central  Asia,  7  ;  a  solar 
myth,  31,  323. 

Tells,  sleep  of  the  three,  a  winter- 
myth,  34. 

Thalamus,  Gladstone  on,  279. 

Themis,  Gladstone's  derivation  of, 
278. 

Theopompos  on  the  date  of  Homer, 
241. 

Thomas  of  Erceldoune  corresponds 
to  the  Tannhauser  legend,  40. 

Thor,  as  the  storm-god  of  ancient 
mythology,  25  ;  as  patron  of 
marriage,  88  5  imitated  by  the 
Devil,  1 68. 

Thorpe,  Benjamin,  his  Anahcta 
Anglo-Saxonica,  64  n. ;  his  North- 
ern Mythology,  23  ;  on  were- 
wolves, 122  ;  on  the  cat-woman, 
125  n.  ;  on  seal-woman,  136  n.; 
on  the  hand  of  glory,  6 1  ;  on  the 
Devil,  172  n.,  173  n. 

Three  Princesses  of  Whiteland,  tale 
of,  17- 

Three  Snake  Leaves,  tale  of  the,  82. 

Thukydides,  his  testimony  with  re- 
gard to  a  remote  antiquity,  of  what 
value,  259. 

Thunder,  North  German  myth  of, 
65  n. 

Thunder-storm  as  explained  by  sci- 
ence and  by  ancient  mythology, 
29. 

Thursday  as  day  of  the  fire-god, 
88. 

Tithonos,  place  of  the  story  of, 
among  myths,  36. 


Tom  of  Coventry  as  a  wind-myth 
48. 

Tom  Thumb  and  the  cow,  105  n. 

Torquemada  on  the  talismanic  hand 
among  Mexican  thieves,  62. 

Tortoise  -  myths,  Hindu,  232  j 
American  Indian,  232. 

Totemism  connected  with  the  feel- 
ing of  metempsychosis,  102,  1 06. 

Trances,  fetichism  in,  300. 

Trefoil,  yellow,  as  a  love-charm, 
89  n. 

Tristram,  goblet  of,  89. 

Trojan  War,  Greek  and  Sanskrit 
version  compared,  27 ;  elements 
of  the  myth  found  in  the  Vedas, 
27,  30,  263  ;  the  evidence  for, 
260 ;  how  far  a  sun-myth,  263  n. ; 
how  far  a  genuine  tradition,  269— 
274. 

Trolls,  175-179,  225. 

True  and  Untrue,  American  parallel 
of  the  brothers,  211  n. 

Trypanon,  the  Greek  name  for  fire- 
drill,  87. 

Tuesday,  etymology  of,  146. 

Turn-coats  a  name  for  werewolves, 

121. 

Twelve,  derivation  of,  196  ;  the 
Genesis  of  Language  on,  196  n. 

Tylor,  E.  B.,  prefatory  remark  on, 
vii;  on  Hessian  superstition,  293; 
on  personification  of  names,  301  n.  ; 
on  other  self,  303  ;  on  breath  as 
soul,  305  ;  on  the  soul  embodied 
in  animals,  306  ;  on  metempsy- 
chosis among  the  Malays,  3i4n.  j 
on  funeral  ceremonies  and  object- 
souls,  317;  his  Early  History  of 
Mankind,  183  n.  ;  on  an  Esqui- 
maux moon-myth,  220 ;  on  an 
American  sun-myth,  231  ;  his 
Primitive  Culture  praised,  284, 
288  ;  on  barbaric  idea  of  the  sky, 
64  n. ;  on  lightning-myths,  70  n., 
88  n.  ;  on  the  chark,  85  n.  ;  on 
the  Hindu  practice  of  self-immo- 
lation, 102  n.  ;  on  Red  Riding- 
Hood,  105  n.  j  on  cat-woman, 


35 


INDEX 


.  5  on  the  word  nightmare, 
126  n.  ;  on  the  word  (ie-vi/,  143 
n.  ;  on  Ra  Vula  and  Ra  Kalavo, 
219  ;  on  Kamtchatkan  lightning- 
myth,  229. 

Typhon,  characteristics  of,  retained 
by  the  Devil,  168. 

Tyrolese,  their  idea  of  breath  as  the 
soul,  305. 

Undine,  story  of,  degraded  by  Chris- 
tianity, 133;  origin  of  the  myth 
of,  139. 

Unkulunkulu,  the  Great  Father  of 
the  Zulus,  320. 

Urban,  Pope,  and  Tannhauser, 
40. 

Ursula,  and  the  eleven  thousand  vir- 
gins, as  a  German  moon-myth, 
3  8  ;  in  Christian  mediaeval  mythol- 
ogy, 38  ;  as  Venus  in  the  legend 
of  Tannhauser,  38,  41. 

Urvasi,  story  of,  130;  as  a  dawn- 
nymph  and  as  a  bird,  131. 

Usilosimapundu  in  Zulu  legend,  234. 

Utahagi,  legend  of,  220. 

Uthlakanyana,  legend  of,  225. 

Valhalla  and  Odin's  golden  ship,  66. 

Valkyries,  as  clouds  hovering  over 
the  battlefields,  25,  180  ;  identi- 
cal with  the  Hindu  Apsaras,  139  ; 
related  to  the  Mussulman  Houris, 
139. 

Van  Diemen's  Land,  the  home  of 
ghosts,  38  n. 

Varuna,  or  the  sky,  the  Sanskrit 
form  of  the  Greek  Ouranos,  67  ; 
contradiction  in  the  Aryan  con- 
ception of,  149  ;  a  personification 
of  light  and  warmth,  149. 

Vasilissa  the  Beautiful,  Russian  story 
of,  105  n. 

Veda,  mythology  of,  23  ;  names  of 
gods  and  heroes  in,  26  ;  the  Indra- 
story  in,  160,  161,  163  ;  divini- 
ties of,  identified  with  Western  gods 
and  heroes,  191;  the  story  of  the 
Wrath  of  Achilleus  in,  263-266  ; 


records  the  mental  life  of  the 
"  youth  of  the  world,"  267. 

Vedas,  the  composition  of,  249.        v 

Venus  as  rising  from  the  sea,  33. 

Venusberg,  legend  of  the,  38. 

Versipellis,  the  Roman  name  for 
werewolf,  121. 

Villemarque,  J.  H.,  Viscount  de  la, 
his  Barxas  Sreix  on  Van  Die- 
men's  Land,  the  home  of  ghosts, 
38  n. 

Viracocha,  legend  of,  212  ;  deriva- 
tion of  the  word,  212. 

Virgil,  on  the  etymology  of  the  word 
Latium,  in  the  yEneid,  99  n.  ; 
on  the  myth  of  Hercules  and 
Cacus,  157,  1 60. 

Vischer,  W.,  in  Tell    bibliography, 

.3*5-. 

Vishnu  in  tortoise-myth,  233. 

Vittikab,  1 68. 

Vivasvat,  as  the  sun,  in  the  Rig- 
Veda,  149. 

Vivien  and  Merlin,  35. 

Vocabularies,  comparing  of,  196, 
199,  204. 

Volsunga  Saga,  1 80. 

Vollmer,  W.,  on  Sancus,  in  Mytho- 
logic,  1 60  n. 

Vowel  changes  in  related  languages, 
199. 

Vritra,  in  the  Rig-Veda,  1 60,  161, 
163  ;  the  name  generalized,  164  ; 
characteristics  of,  retained  by  the 
Devil,  1 68  ;  and  Indra,  194. 

Vulcan  is  Wayland  the  Smith  of 
Norse  mythology,  6. 

Wainamoinen,  Finnish,  classed  among 

wind-myths,  44. 
Wakefulness,     eternal,     myths     of, 

36. 
Wallace,   A.   R.,    on    Malay  belief 

that  men  can  be  transformed  into 

crocodiles,  222  n. 
Wandering  Jew,  legend  of,  its  place 

among  myths,    36  ;  the  curse  in 

the  legend  of,  155  n. 
Water  of  life,  86. 


352 


INDEX 


Waterspout,  Arabian  personification 
of,  322. 

Wayland  the  Smith,  the  Norse  Vul- 
can, 6. 

Weber,  Albrecht,  on   the  Mara,  in 

'•    Indhche  Studien,  131  n. 

Welcker,  F.  G.,  his  Griechhche 
Gotterlchre,  169  n. 

Werewolf,  etymology  and  meaning 
of  the  term,  95  ;  called  by  the 
ancient  Romans  versipellis,  121  ; 
theories  of  the  method  of  change 
from  man  to  wolf,  121—123  5 
accidents  accompanying  change, 
123,  124;  how  cured,  125; 
originally,  the  night-wind  and  a 
psychopomp,  139  ;  compared  with 
the  swan-maiden,  139;  the  an- 
cestor of  the  death-dog,  139. 


Werewolves,      and 
94-140  ;    belief 


Swan-maidens, 


in,    in 


ancient, 


mediaeval,  and  modern  times,  23 
95  ;  presents  mixture  of  mythical 
and  historical  elements,  96  ;  Cox's 
explanation  of  the  origin  of,  un- 
satisfactory, 96,  loo,  120;  real 
origin  of,  connected  with  ancestor- 
worship  and  doctrine  of  metem- 
psychosis, 105-107,  120,  306 ; 
and  witchcraft,  107 ;  historical 
development  of,  107-116,  1195 
summary  of  the  explanation  of  the 
origin  and  development  of,  119, 
1 20  ;  in  barbaric  myths,  222— 
224.  See  Lycanthropy. 

Wesleyafl  peasants'  belief  in  angels 
piping  to  children,  a  form  of  wind- 
myth,  43. 

White  Bear  that  marries  the  young 
girl,  story  of,  133. 

White-thorn,  as  a  lightning-tree, 
74  ;  formed  Roman  wedding 
torches,  88. 

Wild  Huntsman,  story  of,  its  place 
among  myths,  36. 

Wilkinson,  J.  T.,  his  Lancashire 
Folk-Lore,  on  lore-charms,  89  n.  ; 
on  a  witch  of  Lancashire,  306. 

William  of  Cloudeslee,  the  Tell  of 


England,  6  ;  traced  to  sun-myth, 
32. 

Williams,  Howard,  on  werewolves, 
in  Superstitions  of  Witchcraft, 
125  n. 

Williams,  Sir  Monier  Monier-,  on 
Trolls,  in  Indian  Epic  Poetry, 
176  n. 

Wilson,  H.  H.,  on  Hindu  rite  of 
suttee,  315. 

Wind-and-Weather,  the  story  of, 
178,  179. 

Wind,  as  music,  42,  43  ;  as  psycho- 
pomp,  43-47 ;  as  elf-maiden, 
43  ;  in  Hindu  folk-lore,  105  j 
the  original  of  the  werewolf,  139, 
323. 

Wind-myths  in  ancient  mythology, 
41-48. 

Winter-myths,  33-36. 

Winterthiir,  John  of,  does  not  men- 
tion Tell  in  his  account  of  the 
Swiss  revolution,  3. 


Wish-bone  as  a  talismar 


75  n. 


Wish-hound  of  Hermes,  104. 

Witchcraft  and  the  belief  in  were- 
wolves, 107,  108. 

Wolf,  J.  W.,  on  the  Mara,  in 
Seitrage  xur  deutschen  Mytholo- 
gie,  1 3 1  n. 

Wolf-girdles    used    by    werewolves, 

122,    123. 

Wolfian  hypothesis  of  the  composi- 
tion of  the  Homeric  poems,  245— 
256. 

Wolfskins  used  to  change  men  into 
wolves,  122. 

Wolves,  superstitions  with  regard  to, 
105. 

Wraiths,  philosophy  of,  308. 

Wrath  of  Achilleus,  considered  as  a 
structural  part  of  the  Iliad,  252— 
256  ;  known  in  Aryana-vaedjo, 
263  ;  in  the  Veda,  the  Iliad,  and 
the  Nibelungenlied,  263. 

Wren,  as  representing  the  storm- 
cloud,  69. 

Xenophon    cites  cases  of  Athenians 


353 


INDEX 


who  could  repeat  Iliad  and  Odyssey 
verbatim,  247. 

Ximenes,  Cardinal,  and  his  bonfire 
of  books,  247. 

Yama  in  the  Vedic  religion,  103. 
Yellow    hair  of  the  Greek  heroes, 

273.  _ 
Yggdrasil,   the   ash-tree,    first    man 

made  from,  in  Norse  mythology, 

Youth  of  the  World,  as  the  title  of 
Gladstone's  work,  235,  236; 
may  be  applied  to  the  Homeric 
age,  238  ;  is  the  period  at  which 
literature  begins,  238,  239  ;  as 


applied  to  the  time  of  the  Aryan 
forefathers,  267. 

Zendavesta,  the  myth  of  Hercules 
and  Cacus  in,  164,  165. 

Zeus,  etymology  of,  26,  145,  146, 
267  ;  his  slumber  on  Mount  Ida 
a  moon-myth,  41  ;  derivation  of 
the  word  forgotten  by  the  Greeks, 
71  ;  Lykaios,  rites  at  the  festival 
of,  94. 

Zio,  etymology  of,  146. 

Zulus,  their  cannibal  myths,  224— 
228  ;  their  ideas  of  dreams,  295  j 
their  Great  Father,  319. 

Zurich,  Tell's  cross-bow  at,  2. 


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